Eat that GW believers!

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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Michael Ballantine
Posted Mar 19, 2005 at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Reply

John A, In the fields of Engineering where we deal with hard data and easily verifiable facts, the observed variation is so small compared to the error bars that it would be dismissed as artificial artifacts of noise with aliasing of the signal being a huge problem.

For the variations to have any meaning at all, the raw data must have a resolution that is one significant digit finer than what you want to display. If you want to say 1 degree then your data only needs to have a resolution of 1 degrees. If you want to say 1.0 degrees your data must have a resolution of 0.1 degrees or your statement of 1.0 has no meaning. If you want to say 1.06 degrees then your data MUST have a resolution of 0.03 degrees. If you want to compare results from different sites your instruments must all agree to the same ridiculous level across the entire measurement range tha is used.

I challenge anyone reading this to show proof of 10 or more temperature measuring instruments that can meet this critera outside of a well controlled laboratory. 0.5 degrees of agreement in the field would be incredibly accurate. 1 degree is more likely with the absolute accuracy getting worse as we go back in time. Most fluid displacement thermometers are only accurate at 0.0C and 100C (at sea level).

Variations in the middle of +/- 2 degrees are common.
So, if all of the instrumental temperature data from the field correlates to 0.5 degrees or worse then anyone claiming accurate variations in the massaged data of less than 0.5 degrees is either lying or deluded.
http://climateaudit.org/2005/03/19/fran ... llgemeine/

So you have to wonder how you can find a REAL .6 deg signal in a system whose calibration is no better than .5 deg.

And that does not even discuss the station site quality issues.

http://surfacestations.org/

Look at the map. The vast majority of stations in the USA (the best in the world) are no better than 1 deg C according to NASA criteria.

http://climateaudit.org/2007/10/20/sensor-blackening/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/tag/mmts/

How bad is it?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/23/t ... isualized/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/t ... wf-report/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/a ... o-skeptic/

Here is a good one. A scientist thinks it is CFCs and cosmic rays that are causing global warming:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/s ... l-warming/

Now what if we are are spending trillions to solve the wrong problem?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/22/the- ... ermometer/
In the discussion of the Tucson weather station, Ben Herman of the U of Arizona observed that there were serious biases with the HO-83 hygrothermometer – introduced in the early 1990s – which was said to be a contributor to the uptick to Tucson values. Although USHCN has implemented adjustments to U.S. data to deal with time-of-observation bias and station history, both of which resulted in significant upward adjustments of recent data relative to earlier data, I have been unable to see any evidence that either NOAA or NASA made any attempt to adjust for the upward bias of recent readings using the HO-83 thermometer, although its problems are thoroughly discussed in the specialist literature.

Problems with a warm bias in the HO-83 system were first reported in print in Gall et al 1992 in connection with Tucson here. Kessler et al 1993, a follow-up article about stations in New York by some of the same authors said:
They indicated that the HO-83 maximum temperature readings at Tucson were probably too warm by 1-2 deg C on sunny, light wind days, that the problem could probably be attributed to the design of the instrument and that an investigation was under way… Their investigation (Gall et al 1992) revealed that the warm bias (~1 -2 deg C) maximized shortly after solar noon and that the bias was very small or even slightly negative shortly before sunrise. Consequently recalibration checks done in the early morning would fail to reveal any bias in the HO-83 hygrothermometer.
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MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

And Josh,

You will note that I was involved in the discussion of instrumentation (one of my areas of expertise) in 2007.

http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/22/the- ... ent-100827

A study of thermistor drift from actual weather measuring instruments would be a good thing. I'm not aware that such an effort has been made.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

SteveSadlov
Posted Aug 27, 2007 at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Reply

RE: #119 – I’ve done some Six Sigma coaching, and have found that thermal measurement instruments of any kind are the perfect tool for conducting a “learn by doing” lesson regarding Measurement Systems Analysis (MSA) aka Gage Repeatibility and Reliability (Gage R&R). Funny thing …. whenever I bring this up at Real Climate (or even arguing with the climate science orthodoxy participants at other venues) they cast it aside as “what does this have to do with climate science” or “haven’t you heard about the effects of large numbers” etc. I simply laugh.
http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/22/the- ... ent-100936
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

taniwha
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Post by taniwha »

MSimon wrote:
Nah, Hansen is old hat ("father of AGW"). He's not in the pockets of anyone as far as I understand,
[maniacal laughter elided]

You are hilarious.
Josh Cryer wrote:We need to be able to use our own resources for energy, so I could care less if we got rid of fossil on other grounds.
(bolding added)

He's also rather shaky on logic. If his logic was less shaky, and/or he put more thought into what he was actually saying, he'd understand that he's saying the opposite of what he intends. ie, he's saying that he does care (even if only a little), rather than that he does not care.

Josh: for your benefit, the correct expression is "I could not care less" ("coundn't" is also correct). The logic behind the expression is that when you care not one little bit, it is impossible to care any less because you are already at zero.

I guess a few somebodies misheard the correct (contracted) form, and it spread.

Effective communication requires accurate usage of language.

Now back to our irregularly scheduled discussion 8)

Josh Cryer
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Post by Josh Cryer »

MSimon,
The things I mentioned I have ACTUALLY STUDIED to the best of my ability.
They sounded like a list of "bad data points" for measurements. The scientists get no credit for *recognizing* these data points and *correcting* them to the best of their ability.

We look at USHCN data and we see statements "oh my god they adjusted upward for decades!" Yet over the exact time frame they moved from PM to AM, requiring a slight adjustment upward.
I advocate open science openly done. Release all data. Starting with station records. Then adjusted station records. Then data ensembles.
So do I. I am glad I am in America where all science products in almost every public field (astronomy, space, climate) are publicly available, for free: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html

Yes, it is all there, MSimon. It really, really is. Note, I do find it unfortunate that you have to pay for the data, however, I just see it as the result of a capitalistic society.

Fortunately, and here's the fun part, if you browse the site from .edu or .gov or .k12 or whatever the elementary school domain is, you are able to view the data for free. All of it. Every morsel. Mmm. So cool.
Then all the transformations required to get from raw data to the data ensembles.
Those are explained in the papers, however GISS does release source code that can do it. Hey, I'm with you. I said I think ClimatePrediction.net should be open, since everyone who runs their software is donating their hard earned electricity to do it! But, it is a distinctly European affair, and we know how those pesky Europeans are. I call it the Oxford School of Science, where taking their word for it is the final say.
Then we look at all the models and all the parameterizations used in the models. Check them against data.
That is what the peer review presumably does. At least in the case of American data you most certainly can do this, and we have the whole blogosphere ripe with individuals who can do this, but instead of doing it, instead of finding problems with the methodology, they point out "funny graphs." McIntyre (CA) did it once, and GISS was thankful, it worked out well. It's been a while since he's been able to point out a real error in the data and methods though. (But it does show that the peer review is happy to take suggestions.)
Of course with funding dependent on ever more dire predictions it will be hard to get honest science done.
Yeah, Bussard has shown all too well why scientists are coerced into doing things a certain way. Not from some sort of evil way, it's just capitalism for ya. However, groups like GISS and NOAA are guaranteed funding, there's no evidence that they're not doing the job as best they can.
BTW in the science experiment did the experimenter saturate the container with water vapor? You know as a cross check against confounding variables in the real system?
The video I saw that did the experiment was on Discovery channel, teaching children about how CO2 absorbs IR. The details of the experiment are not available to me, however, it was simply set up and can easily be reproduced. In fact, as seedload mentioned, it's possible he saturated the whole glass container with huge amounts of CO2. The point is that it does absorb IR. It wouldn't happen with either Oxygen or Nitrogen, and the experimentor showed that, so if he was being honest (and he was just a high school teacher), it would have used relatively the same amounts of gas for each. It would be really crummy, if on the CO2 experiment, he introduced water vapor or used more gas. That was not how it was shown, though.
You will note I found Hansen's double dealing in 2007.
You have not established that in any way whatsoever, in fact Hansen regularly invokes Enron when decrying the problems with cap and trade. Given that the article you quote is the only thing I can find in the first 5 pages of Google about this "Enron-Hansen" connection, I find it spurious at best. Even if true it doesn't prove anything about Hansen is or has in the past "double dealed." If anything it shows the scope at which denialists will go to trash a good name.

Hansen predicted CO2 would be distinct from warming by the mid 90s. Throw out all land based measurements, go only with satellite data. He was right. Dead on right. Why this doesn't give him credibility with you guys I don't know.
Start with this premise: the whole field of climate science with very few exceptions is corrupt to the core.
That requires putting the whole of science into question, and I'm over 30, I grew past my metaphysical phase where I questioned science and whether or not it was good at approximating reality. If climate science is corrupt, then why isn't space science? Could it really be that NASA has been hiding alien artifact images from the public for so long? Does Area 51 really harbor aliens? That is the line of questioning you are provoking me in to.
It is now two years later and the nictitating membranes are still covering your eyes.
Erm, trying to connect Hansen to fossil interests is rich coming from a group who has dozens upon dozens of verifiable connections to the same industry. Look at the Global Climate Coalition whose job is no longer necessary because the conspiracy nuts on the internet have taken up the slack for 'em.

It goes deep, MSimon, very deep.

Which is more reasonable? The science is corrupted and all climate scientists that agree with IPCC numbers are climate activists? Or that the blogosphere and forums and internet personas that are against taking responsibility for the scientific implications of catastrophic climate change are mostly dis-informed by a lobby that doesn't want to act in order to maintain its profits?
Coal bad. Natural gas good.
Yes, I find it unfortunate that natural gas gets a good image in environmentalist circles, particularly those who favor wind. I get into long arguments with a wind guy over at DU with regards to natural gas. (Why develop natural gas further when you're going to replace it with storage anyway? Why not do the storage at the same time as wind?) Stuff like that.

Connecting James Hansen to natural gas, though, is awfully wrong of you. There's no connection there whatsoever.
Engineers get disabused of that sort of thinking by having to solve real problems in real time. I can't tell you how many times when I was SURE of the cause of the problem I was lead astray.
I write software, programs, and have had similar problems. I am extremely careful when I do modifications on the TMS forums and sister site, building test cases beforehand, and only applying them when I have a large degree of certainty about their behavior. Several people have attempted to run similar sites, they have been hacked to oblivion (applying buggy third party upgrades, or simply failing to update at all).
These days I tend to gather more data and look for causes outside my normal frame of reference.
I think you are accusing me of doing something that I am not doing, though. I mean, sure, people have come to me with the claim that raw data can't be found (kind of like how you said all data needs to be open), and I showed them that link. But the truth is that I had it long before then. I'm a NASA freak, and I love government data sets, you can easily get lost in them.

Talked to a guy a few weeks back who helped archive some of the PDS stuff. Apparently they had to use iron filings and a magnifying glass to hand-transcribe the data on those tapes! Have 3-4 guys do it, you get rid of most of the errors. Of course, I'm just waiting for some of the alien guys to come find me now and say "what if they made errors on the Viking data and the Face on Mars was really there!"
And Josh. I think I put 20 or 30 hours into that one and was rather active in the discussion of the subject at Climate Audit.
Who is too close to the politics, you or me? I don't spend days on Real Climate. I post in E&E on DU and that's about it. And my concern about the environment really hinges on my desire for self-sufficiency, buying a farm, living on it with my chickens! :) Farm boy for life!
But [gundecking] is so common in the Navy that they actually have a term for it.
Eh, my dad was Army and Navy, two brothers one Army one Navy. I know all too well about military (ir)responsibility. ;)
So you have to wonder how you can find a REAL .6 deg signal in a system whose calibration is no better than .5 deg.
The error bars are smaller because the methods of measuring are more accurate. The error bars are bigger further back you go, because the data sets were in flux for some 50 years.
And that does not even discuss the station site quality issues.
Got something better? Got a better data set? Or should science just say "well, the data is so messed up we should just give up"?
Heh. I guess you missed the post I made earlier in the thread. So is the warming happening or is it not happening? If it's happening and galactic cosmic rays are responsible for it, and we find that they're not, are you going to say the warming isn't happening to the extent that is measured?
It accounts for about 5% of the network (see, I actually read your links!), it should be included though, perhaps USHCN v3 will include it.
Effective communication requires accurate usage of language.
That's nothing, I used to write "chick" as "chic," for about 5 years there. Oh, and I spelled "official" as "offical," for I don't know how long. No one ever corrected it! Bastards.
Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is.

Luzr
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Post by Luzr »

Josh Cryer wrote:The video I saw that did the experiment was on Discovery channel, teaching children about how CO2 absorbs IR. The details of the experiment are not available to me, however, it was simply set up and can easily be reproduced. In fact, as seedload mentioned, it's possible he saturated the whole glass container with huge amounts of CO2. The point is that it does absorb IR. It wouldn't happen with either Oxygen or Nitrogen, and the experimentor showed that, so if he was being honest (and he was just a high school teacher), it would have used relatively the same amounts of gas for each. It would be really crummy, if on the CO2 experiment, he introduced water vapor or used more gas. That was not how it was shown, though.
This one?

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/24/b ... -prove-it/

Josh Cryer
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Post by Josh Cryer »

No, he had a much more sophisticated setup. An enclosed glass cylinder with a hose connected in the middle with which gas was to be inserted. They showed cylinders for nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. A candel was lit on one end of the cylinder (far enough away so that it wouldn't heat it appreciably, I think maybe a foot or more), and an IR camera was at the other end of the cylinder. You could clearly see the candle when oxygen was inserted, and you could clearly see it when nitrogen was inserted (presumably the cylinder was evacuated between each insertion). When CO2 was inserted the candle slowly, obviously, faded from visibility in the IR camera.

I don't think anyone here on this website questions the IR absorption of CO2, but it does look like WUWT does question that it is measurable in a small table top home experiment.

I question the validity of their "experiment" since the added thermocouples were inside the bottles throughout. The pressure in the CO2 bottle is going to be higher, allowing for more heat to radiate away from the thermocouples more than the bottle with less heat. Added thermocouples thus will retain more heat as an aggregate. If you want to use more thermocouples then it is best to measure the temperature of the water using exact methods for both CO2 and regular air.

Actually, due to Charles's Law, leaving the cork open and allowing gas to escape, if that's what he did, would completely ruin the experiment. It's a heat engine! All that gas will get out!

Wow from a comment in that link: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/v ... consensus/

That's exactly how I feel (read the creators statements)! I read some skeptical thing, think about it real hard, and try to find something about it, to figure out if it's true or not. These days I can intuit what is wrong with someones stuff, but often times you actually have to read the scientific papers to determine whether or not the denialists are making shit up or not. Usually they are. But I actually look for the data, I think about it really hard. It's unfortunate that the vast majority of people don't (can't) do this. And that our media and our internet has people so misled.
Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Yes, it is all there, MSimon. It really, really is. Note, I do find it unfortunate that you have to pay for the data, however, I just see it as the result of a capitalistic society.
The data was already paid for.

And you know it is not just American data that is in question.

I do note that UEA has started releasing stuff that last year it would not let go of. So maybe ClimateGate has done some good.

However, measuring a .6 deg rise in a network where the vast majority of stations are no better than +/- 1 deg C is not as we say in the measurement business "statistically valid". And that is in the best network. The errors outside the US are considered higher. And areas undersampled. And oceans? We probably know quite a bit historically about trade routes. The rest of the oceans historically are a mystery.

Generally you don't count a measurement ensemble as showing you something until the measurement exceeds 2X the error bars. By that criteria we do in fact actually know nothing. There is no way to be sure if we have data or measurement noise. And given ClimateGate we can't even be sure about the temperature record.

And Hansen? It would be interesting to find out who owns him now.

And CO2? According to Hansen it is bad if it comes from coal and OK if it comes from oil and natural gas. Some one owns him. Maybe the nuclear folks this time around. Or the solar lobby. Or the wind lobby. But given his pronouncements I'd guess an oil/gas company or lobby.
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TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

However, measuring a .6 deg rise in a network where the vast majority of stations are no better than +/- 1 deg C is not as we say in the measurement business "statistically valid". And that is in the best network.
And building GCM models against that data based on the unvalidated assumption that small changes in a trace gas are the primary driver of climate then claiming those models are 90% reliable is just crazy. Which is why real scientists who don't have an envirojihadist mentality and millions in grants on the line say the models have no scientific basis.

Polls are now finding the percentage of people who believe AGW is a real and urgent problem is approaching the number who believe Mars is littered with alien artifacts, even despite all the AGW cheerleading from the MSM.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Josh wrote: I'm going to relink the Economist article for this new page (won't hurt the 22k Google results for Darwin Zero!): http://www.economist.com/blogs/democrac ... scientists
That anonymous and deeply stupid article was already completely destroyed here by Eschenbach. Almost nothing the Economist article claims makes any sense. Most hilarious excerpts:
While this is true, it doesn’t apply. None of the GHCN adjustments are from any of those sources. This is because the GHCN does not adjust for location moves. Nor does it adjust for construction of buildings, nor for any of the other items listed. The GHCN uses none of those to make its adjustments. So all of that is totally meaningless
Ouch. But this is my favorite part:
Next you say: “Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand.”

Your understanding of statistics is as poor as your understanding of chronology. The statistics used by GHCN are average college level tools. You are dazzled by the fact that you don’t understand them, so you make the incredibly foolish assumption that no one without “a PhD in a related field” can understand them either. Some of us actually paid attention in class, you know.
Meanwhile, more nonsense identified and destroyed by Willis:
Second, I had said that the Darwin temperature data couldn’t have been adjusted by using the GHCN method. This method requires five neighboring stations to which Darwin can be compared. Why couldn’t the GHCN method be used? I said it was because in the earlier time periods like the 1930s, there were no such stations covering that time period within 500 km of Darwin. I was wrong, it fact there is one such station.

Neither of these errors of mine affect my point, which is that there are not enough neighboring stations to adjust Darwin using the main GHCN method.
You keep pointing to the methodology papers. They aren't following the methodology.
While a correction in Darwin is perhaps necessary, it is cannot be because they ”moved their dang instruments” in January of 1941. LOOK AT THE DATA. There is no big change in January of 1941. It occurred gradually over the previous five years. So your theory falls apart upon the simplest examination of the facts.
Yes, Darwin Zero is the smoking gun.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

The graphic doesn't even get the AGW "consensus" right. No one thinks CO2 is directly causing more than 1 degree change; the rest is from alleged feedbacks. Most of the debate is over whether the feedbacks are strongly positive.

Also, the "trailing feedback" CO2 scenario does not stand up well to scrutiny. When you look at the bqack end of warming cycles, you don't find any CO2 warming signal there.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

OK. Look at the data.

First off how trustworthy is it given what we know about Hide The Decline.

But OK. I will leave that alone.

Please explain Oh Data Master how you can determine a signal that is BELOW the measurement noise?

Now don't get me wrong. I know how to do that with a repetitive signal that can be coherently sampled (and even there you are limited by in band noise). After all I dabble in HF SSB receiver design using the so called Tayloe (switched capacitor) detector design. So please Oh Data Master please tell me what is the correct sampling frequency for Climate in order to separate the signal from the out of band noise?

Dude. You are blowing smoke when you say that you have looked at the data. Seen it? To be sure. Looked with a critical eye? Not on your life.

And then to see that the corrections to the "data" match the so called temp rise? Well it raises doubts in the scientific (sceptical) mind. And even with the "corrections" the "signal" is not out of the noise. It does not even match the noise which in radio work of the amateur sort must be at least equal to the in band (of the receiver and atmosphere) noise. It is called the MDS - minimum detectable signal.

We have a case where the signal is not even equal to the "receiver" noise.

Look at a BER curve for signal to noise.

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

It doesn't get good (<1e-6 error rate) with the very best encoding until you have 10 dB signal to noise (SNR). That is the signal must be at least 3X the noise. And that is low bit rate coding. High bit rate coding requires better SNR.

If you want to believe that is fine by me. But don't tell me that it is conclusively proved. Because I'm not going to buy it.

BTW the error bars given the US stations are primarily based on site selection. Instrumentation drift. Instrument problems (design maintenance) are not even considered.

For US stations the last I read the electronic instruments currently used have an MTBF of around 800 hours (around a month). Pitiful. And that is in the best gol durn network in the world. I'd love to see how many days go by from a failure report until the problem is fixed (uptime).

Also note. A station in Hawaii failed. Was reported failed (temps too high) and yet the data was not removed from the record last I heard. High quality network my arse. Best in the world? Probably true. What does that tell you about the quality of the data for the rest of the world?
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TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Got something better? Got a better data set? Or should science just say "well, the data is so messed up we should just give up"?
As has been pointed out before, between giving up and claiming the data is reliable there's the possibility of being honest about where the error bars belong.

Maybe we should get better data before we spend trillions of dollars on a poorly substantiated "crisis" built on cobwebs and dreams.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

There have been several posts here that state or imply, in essense, that it is not possible to detect a 0.5 degree change in temperature given that the array of guages can't be shown accurate within +-2 degrees. Sorry, this is not true.

It is true that you will not be able to accurately state what the magnitude of the temperature is, but it is possible thru proper statistical methods to extract accurate information about CHANGES in that magnitude.

Of course, those proper statistical methods would look extreme askance at hand-picking the data set.

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