Last year Anthony Watts said that it was a certainty that siting differences caused a warm bias:
"I can say with certainty that our findings show that there are
differences in siting that cause a difference in temperatures, not
only from a high and low type measurement but also from a trend
measurement and a trend calculation.""The early arguments against this project said that all of these
different biases are going to cancel themselves out and there would be
cool biases as well as warm biases, but we discovered that that wasn't
the case. The vast majority of them are warm biases, and even such
things as people thinking a tree might in fact keep the temperature
cooler doesn't really end up that way."
Now that Watts et al has been accepted for publication we find that his paper says the opposite and gets the same result as Menne at al:
Temperature trend estimates vary according to site classification, with poor siting leading to an overestimate of minimum temperature trends and an underestimate of maximum temperature trends, resulting in particular in a substantial difference in estimates of the diurnal temperature range trends. The opposite-signed differences of maximum and minimum temperature trends are similar in magnitude, so that the overall mean temperature trends are nearly identical across site classifications.
Mind you, if you read Pielke Sr's spin, you might not notice:
Volunteer Study Finds Station Siting Problems Affect USA Multi-Decadal Surface Temperature Measurements
We found that the poor siting of a significant number of climate reference sites (USHCN) used by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) to monitor surface air temperatures has led to inaccuracies and larger uncertainties in the analysis of multi-decadal surface temperature anomalies and trends than assumed by NCDC.
And on and on for over 600 words about alleged inaccuracies in poorly sited stations before grudgingly conceding
In the United States, where this study was conducted, the biases in maximum and minimum temperature trends are fortuitously of opposite sign, but about the same magnitude, so they cancel each other and the mean trends are not much different from siting class to siting class.
Hat tip: Steve.
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May I be the first here to congratulate mr Watts et al on their contribution to confirming AGW is correct. Along with more than 2000 other research papers on the subject.
Mullered was bad enough. Now Watts has been self-Mullered.
But the photos, what about the photos?
You don't have to be a cunning blowhard to work in the family business.
But it most certainly helps.
Oh that's precious.
Being a modest fellow, Anthony doesn't want to take all the credit for this monumental balls-up:
>Some may ask why I am not lead author. That was my choice, because the strength is in the statistical analysis, and I wanted it clear that the paper is about that joint work and not about any one personâs efforts.
Luckily global warming is all a fraud so WUWT's readership will find this all irrelevant.
Oh that's precious.
Being a modest fellow, Anthony doesn't want to take all the credit for this monumental balls-up:
>Some may ask why I am not lead author. That was my choice, because the strength is in the statistical analysis, and I wanted it clear that the paper is about that joint work and not about any one personâs efforts.
Luckily global warming is all a fra*d so WUWT's readership will find this all irrelevant.
Thanks for the hat tip, Tim.
Really, aren't there very serious questions to ask of Watts as to his honesty in what he was saying in that interview in only June last year? The work surely had to be at a very advanced stage by that time. The ABC interview was extracted at Andrew Bolt's blog, thus given wide exposure to the denial-o-sphere in Australia.
And look at the reception the truth now gets: Watts' post is quickly buried by others, as is the one short link to it at Morano's Climate Depot site headed "Widespread flaws in weather stations used to track national weather trends". Compare that to the attack Richard Muller copped from Monaro for his daring to tell Congress that he had come up with the same result that Watts has found.
And will we ever see Andrew Bolt post on this?
Really, this type of dishonesty and hypocrisy on the skeptic side is just getting absurd. Yet look at what's happening in the US at the moment - with potential presidential candidates having to recant their former belief in AGW.
Watts made disbeliever hay with his pet project for years - suggesting that the US temperature trend was all a silly mistake that he had seen through. He should not be allowed to lightly skirt over the failure to prove it.
Wattsy has now taken part in authoring another paper that nobody needed. This should horrify his followers.
I'm also amused at how triumphant they are that Watts got through peer review, despite having argued for the last two years that peer review is not only meaningless, but proof of the fraud.
An instrumental bias in max/min is irrelevant when measuring the change of max/min over time.
Watts cannot admit the central problem to himself: he's wrong. Fiascoes of this sort are inevitable for that simple reason. No amount of hand waving and anomaly hunting will make him right, but he must keep trying or getâthe horror!âa real job.
Ask Tamino how interested Watts is in defending his honesty or integrity. Watts is indifferent to such things, as he has demonstrated repeatedly.
Nick #7 ole "Watsy' has got it pretty right. You however, will never realize it.
Don't worry, It's probably not your fault.
> An instrumental bias in max/min is irrelevant when measuring the change of max/min over time.
Watts et al don't seem to be arguing that. If the quotes are correct, they're saying that the measurement errors have changed over time, leading to a measured minimum temperature trend (change in min over time) that is too large, and a measured maximum temperature trend that is too small.
No doubt plenty of "skeptics" will be out and about to claim YAFNITCO AGW (Yet Another Final Nail In The Coffin Of...), although their claim's vigour will exceed their explanation's rigour.
I've just skimmed parts of it - I'm no stats expert, so peer review by those who are will be far more valuable - but here's another quote from the paper you may not have heard:
> When using Menne et al.âs station set, ratings, and normals period, our aggregation method yields national trend values that differ from theirs on average by less than 0.002°C/century.
Hmmm, back of envelope calculation:
US = about 2% of earth surface
2% of 0.002 = 0.00004°C/century
That's the ballpark global trend difference between Watts et al and Menne et al? (Don't take my word for it, I may have misread it.)
Here's another quote that may not be doing the rounds:
> Conversely, the differing trends in maximum and minimum temperature among classes cause the average temperature trends to be almost identical, especially for the fully adjusted data. In this case, no matter what CRN class is used, the estimated mean temperature trend for the period
1979-2008 is about 0.32ºC/decade.
Ouch. 3 degrees per century, regardless of siting quality classification! Again there may be important caveats surrounding this quote that I did not grok, so take it with a grain of salt.
And here's an indication of the size of the statistically significant trend differences they find between some sets of good and poor sites :
> The statistically significant trend differences found here in the central and eastern United States for CRN 5 stations compared to CRN 1&2 stations are as large (-0.013°C/yr for maximum temperatures, +0.011°C/yr for minimum temperatures) or larger (-0.023°C/yr for diurnal temperature range).
And if I read this right (and I may not have):
> The unadj and tob average temperature trends are about twice as large when estimated from CRN 5 stations as from CRN 1&2 stations; ... As with the 1979-2008 period, the adj trends are nearly identical, but the trend magnitude is much smaller for 1895-2009 than for 1979-2008.
does that imply these particular adjustments are doing a pretty good job with respect to trends, and warming has accelerated the last 3 decades?
What motivation could Watts have for misrepresenting the results and abstract of his own research?
I don't understand.
Lotharsson:
I read those bits and came to the same conclusion as you.
Not being a climate scientist, I must be right.
Of course this is all very interesting to those of us who actually read the research and conclusions of papers on global warming, but I hardly think any of Watts' own supporters are actually going to notice this concession that the scientific analysis was right all along.
I mean, it just doesn't fit in with the deniofact that it's all a giant con. Ipso facto, it cannot be so, and Anthony Watts cannot have said it or must've meant something else. Deniologic is so simple and elegant.
Yes. Do we remember "Is the US Surface Temperature Record Reliable?" which made statements such as "With only 11 percent of surveyed stations being of acceptable quality, the raw temperature data produced by the USHCN stations are not sufficiently accurate to use in scientific studies or as a basis for public policy decisions. Adjustments to the data by NOAA/NCDC and NASA add significant additional warming biases, which compound the errors present from localized site biases." and "The data currently used to claim that the twentieth century witnessed a statistically significant warming trend are unreliable. The truth of that claim can be established only with new and more-reliable data."?
Even worse, of course, was "Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception" which was proved so wrong that Watts had to go in and remove the most inflammatory statements which had originally had their own sidebar box...
And yet, the man who said "Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler." complains because those unethical scoundrels at NOAA actually used publicly posted data to do an analysis that contradicted him. Oh, and wrote "talking points" memos that didn't have an author byline!!! (not that I've ever seen a talking point memo with an author byline in government). Oh, and yes, this same person who released multiple reports and hundreds of blog posts based on his self-described incomplete and not-properly-tested analysis was flabbergasted when Muller actually talked about preliminary results!
Having said that, I actually applaud Watts' work on Fall et al. If _all_ of his public pronouncements were of the quality of the Fall et al. paper, he would actually add something of value to the discussion. I'd probably still disagree with things he said and did, but it would be in the standard scientific-disagreement venue, rather than the junk-science venue. Of course, WUWT wouldn't have its thousands of followers if it stuck to real science, and the Surfacestation project would have had more difficulty finding volunteers if Watts hadn't kept throwing them red contrarian meat. (speaking of which... can anyone find the first post when Watts decided that the word "denier" was inextricably linked to the holocaust?)
-M
For those asking how come Watts doesn't get round to acknowledging any of this: I've never once see Watts admit a single error, ever. He never will. The most apt quote -
> People make mistakes. What distinguishes you from the morons is what you do when the mistakes get pointed out.
[Ben Goldacre](http://www.badscience.net/2009/01/the-telegraph-misrepresent-a-scientis…)
> I hardly think any of Watts' own supporters are actually going to notice this concession that the scientific analysis was right all along.
It might be time to make it known ;-) ;-)
Wouldn't it be interesting to have comments on WUWT that are sourced from Watts' own paper? (Dealing with that level of stupid takes a personal toll though.) Getting Watts to censor his own words - or ban those quoting them - would be quite amusing at some (trivial) level.
On a more serious note, authoritarian followers CAN break away from their delegated authority, but it can take work and time. Often the seed that led to the insight that their leader isn't what they projected on to him/her was planted a long time back - but without the seed they will never leave.
A couple of observations I made at WUWT:
I note the abstract of the paper ends with this statement:
âAccording to the best-sited stations, the diurnal temperature range in the lower 48 states has no century-scale trend.â
But climate scientists and the climate models never said it should did they? And the reason why? because both daytime and night-time temperatures are increasing. Why is that? Because of the blanketing effect of greenhouse gases, which warm the planet by trapping radiation both night and day. What youâve drawn attention to is an observation which is a powerful piece of evidence that global warming is because of greenhouse gases, and not the sun, because any in any model where you increase solar forcing, daytime temperatures increase relative to night-time temperatures.
Well done Anthony for drawing attention to this important piece of evidence for AGW.
- and this response to Courtney:
Richard S Courtney said:
âAnd, as is usual with the most interesting of studies, the findings are not what anybody could have predicted.â
Well they certainly donât support the hypothesis that global warming is an artefact caused by poorly sited stations and the urban heat island effect.
Since others have looked at this data, and shown in peer reviewed papers that removing poorly sited stations makes absolutely no difference to the long term trend of global warming â I think the result of this paper is precisely what they predicted, and theyâve been vindicated.
There is now much moving of goalposts. The observation about no trend in diurnal temperature range based on the best quality stations is inconsequential and a distraction from the clear admission that the claim that global warming is an artefact from itâs main proponent. It is always possible to make âinterestingâ observations if you trawl through enough, but you canât say such observations vindicate your hypothesis unless you made a hypothesis beforehand. What we see here is a clear example of blasting a barn door with a shotgun. drawing a target around a cluster of pellet holes and claiming to be a sharpshooter. To say that âit matters quite a bitâ that diurnal temperature range is underestimated by poorly sited stations as Pielke Sr does is post hoc rationalisation for the exercise. If indeed âit matters quite a bitâ why did was the importance of this drawn to our attention before the exercise was undertaken. The obvious fact that the underestimate means that if anything, the true situation regarding global warming is worse than stated is something that neither Roger Pielke or Anthony Watts thinks âmatters quite a bitâ otherwise why not draw attention to obvious conclusion.
As for it being âfortuitousâ that errors cancel out â thatâs a remarkable way to justify a null result. There are errors in the measurement of any physical phenomenon, and the entire field of statistics has been developed in order to deal with them. Measurements always vary around a mean, typically in a Gaussian bell curve â and to blame this on fortuitous âluckâ if the result doesnât please you is simply sour grapes.
However I am pleased to see that the authors of this paper are now taking an interest in the rest of the world. It wasnât so long ago that claims were being made that there hadnât been any increase in global temperature since the 1930â²s, on the basis of a outlying data point from the 2% of the globe that is the USA. Good luck with extending the surface stations project to the rest of the globe though. I think youâll find that McDonalds car parks and unfortunately sited air conditioning units are in short supply in the Antartic, Chile, the Australian Outback or Siberia, not to mention the 70% of the Earthâs surface that is covered in water.
Whilst I commend the citizen science exercise that Anthony set in motion, and the submission of a paper for peer-review, I also think the attempts to spin this into something positive for the âscepticsâ really are rather desperate.
And yet, the man who said "Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler."
A local denier dragged out this nugget in a thread over at my home-town newspaper's on-line discussion forum. Well, it turns out that I had been playing around with the GHCN data at that time -- I had been able to replicate NASA's land-temperature index pretty closely with a simple program that I wrote.
So I modified my program to exclude those "dropped" stations and I posted my results. Linky here: http://forums.signonsandiego.com/showpost.php?p=4323615&postcount=35 -- it's really incredible how much those "dropped" stations exaggerate the global-warming trend.... NOT!
It is surprisingly easy to code up a simple "bare bones" program that reproduces NASA's results quite closely with *raw* GHCN data -- for someone with some coding skills, it's basically a weekend "spare time" project.
Now the question is, why didn't any of the deniers who have been whining about the temperature data quality for most of the past decade bother to spend a few days to test their claims by crunching some data? Is it a laziness, incompetence, or dishonesty thing? (That's an inclusive 'or', BTW).
So, to summarise the work of Watts in quiz form:
John Nielson-Gammon, one of the co-authors, has posted on this paper at his blog, Climate Abyss.
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/05/something-for-everyone-fall-…
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/05/fall-et-al-2011-the-statisti…
He states that:
âFinally, and perhaps most important, are we really so lucky that the rest of the world would also have its poorly-sited stations have erroneous maximum and minimum temperature trends that just happen to be equal and opposite to each other?â
Watts et al's don't seem to think redoing the work of Menne,or Jones or Peterson or Hansen is silly. It reminds me of the definition of insanity ( attributed to Einstien): "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again anjd expecting different results".
Paul Middents - yes, they're spinning it to suggest that the global land temp reconstructions might be bogus because the US reconstructions work only due to "luck".
Now about those pesky satellite reconstructions that so closely track the land-based reconstructions ...
Watts (and the rest of the denialist zoo) have been relentlessly promoting their dearly held whacky alternative reality belief wherein the global climate science community have been systematically conspiring to defraud humanity for either personal gain (milking publicly funded research grants) or to impose by the backdoor a kommunist weld gubmint or both, through using false data.
The grandly trumpeted surface stations project was initiated to prove those (mutually exclusive?) hypotheses, but has singularly failed to do so.
Will Watts (and the rest of the denialist zoo) now jettison their aforementioned dearly held whacky alternative reality belief?
Now that is a silly question.
Will Pielke Snr. henceforward be held in the same high professional regard as someone who hypothetically co-authored a paper on lizard DNA with David Icke?
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Remember when Watts was so certain he'd accept Muller's results no matter which way they pointed? When Muller gave a preliminary summation in front of Congress there was a worrisome letter written off to make sure Muller did the numbers right by Watts.
Now that his own paper has confirmed the accuracy of the previous constructions of the instrumental record, he's simply ignoring the implications and pushing the idea that it undermines the reliability of the record by finding flaws, insinuating that even the "good" stations are secretly bad, and simply not acknowledging the possibility that his reproduction of previous results might indicate that the record is robust, accurate, and could even have any climate implications.
"Paul Middents - yes, they're spinning it to suggest that the global land temp reconstructions might be bogus because the US reconstructions work only due to "luck"."
I should clarify ... John N-G is no denialist, he's just making an observation.
The spinmeisters I was referring to should be obvious ...
Only about another 8 posts about * nothing * and that whole surface stations embarrassment issue will disappear from Watt's front page like it never existed.
C'mon Anthony & guest posters - you can do it if you will only try hard enough!
I like the insanity quote by Einstein. Very appropriate.
But Watts et al. should never have posted that he would accept Muller's BEST results no matter what - he knew or should have known full well that the surface temp anomaly would prove out. Back in the summer of 2009, the NCDC took only Watt's 70 "best" stations and demonstrated that the trend was virtually identical to that using all the stations...
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf
Did he really think that maybe, just maybe, someone else could really find the mistakes and come up with a different answer?
I don't think Watts can even be that dense.
So... where does that leave us in terms of his motivations...?... theatrics, politics, posturing, obfuscating...?
> I don't think Watts can even be that dense.
If some people's political beliefs are on the line, then they are quite capable of increasing their density to suit.
Where was it I saw the paper that said the deniers have a political agenda, and scientists can never counter that with data? Sheesh, it was just in the last couple of days . . .
Anyway, just from what I've read in the paper, and without checking Watts's blog to see what he says (nor any other except this one), I predict many anti-warmists will claim that the paper indicates simply that we do not know, and they will extrapolate to say we cannot know whether there is warming.
That's the political spin they need.
I hope now that the "science is in: the science is settled", we may get an admission that Watts's certainty was misplaced on the ABC Radio National "Counterpoint" program - or not.
Perhaps ABC Radio National "The Science Show" could take Watts apart as a fair and balanced example of "getting both sides" of the debate, but in this case from the same person (Anthony Watts)!
In the spirit of Galileo, whose history the denialists love to misrepresent, perhaps an imaginary interviewee (the dumb one in Galileo's essay, the flat-Earther :-P ) could stand in for whoever the real one may be...so, with that in mind, we interview away:
Interviewer: Simplicio, you are certain that those intellectual Noddies and academic frauds have deliberately altered the weatherstation data, and used poor-sited warmist biased stations to concoct a fairytale of anthropogenic global warming, damn those fools?
Simplicio: Eh, *cough* yes.
Interviewer: Simplicio, you believe that the statistical errors, small as they are, and the poor-sited stations with their biases (according to Watts's WUWT blog), and the newer thermometers in use having slightly different thermodynamic characteristics, that all of this results in the warming trend of 0.32C/decade is correct, to within an approximate margin of error of 0.002C/decade (or whatever the vanishingly small amount is) as per Watts's latest effort?
Simplicio: Eh, *cough*, yes.
Interviewer: Simplicio, I put it to you that you are now an annointed academic fraud, one of those intellectual Noddies, if you like?
Simplicio: Eh, *cough*,...
Or something like that.
Bernard J. I have your answers:
1. Al Gore is fat.
2. And has a beard.
3. Like some sort of terrorist
4. Until we pointed it out then he went underground by shaving
5. Climategate
6. Watermelons
7. Pachauri and his stable of scientists rake it in while we pay at the pump!
Does anyone know why Jonh Nielsen-Gammon was involved in this charade?
Oh man, I tried so hard to spell Nielsen-Gammon right (deniers always spell Neilsen-Gammon), and then screwed up the 'John'.
@ 35 Donald Oats
Oh surely, certainly, definitely. Duffy and Comrey-wotsisname are all about "balance" and all that.
Prior to this (he won't want to be scooped by that notorious cesspool of lefty greeny hippies and inner-city chardonnay swillers that is Their ABC) will be Mr Blot, who will present the facts of Watts' paper and its ramifications for the Rejectionist faith honestly and faithfully on his bog, and give it headline status on his pogrom programme the Bole Troper.
> Now about those pesky satellite reconstructions that so closely track the land-based reconstructions ...
Once they've sorted those out, maybe they can then go onto sea surface temperature trends. How many of those are sited in car parks?
Yesterday I went searching for support for Watts' project on Andrew Bolt' blog, and came up (amongst many posts with surfacestation.org photos) this radio interview Andrew did with Watts, when touring Australia only a year ago, in which he (Watts) said he estimated that warming bias in siting issues could account for a .5 degree C of warming in the temperature record. (!) Andrew then notes that this means station issues could account for 2/3 of the warming measured last century, and Anthony does not disagree.
(It's in the middle of this audio, no transcript available.)
http://tinyurl.com/43h365x
Call me foolishly optimistic if you want, but I have a vague hope that this may give even someone like Bolt a twinge of doubt about accepting all climate "skeptic" arguments at face value. I've suggested at his blog that he re-interview Watts, and ask how he could have been so wrong only a year ago.
[Steve from brisbane](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/05/anthony_watts_contradicted_by.p…).
If, less that 11 months ago, Watts was claiming that his data (which was collected over a number of years previously) indicated that most warming was an artifact, he either did not believe the results of the data he had collected, or thought that some more tweeking at the eleventh hour might give the result that he wanted to put to the public.
The first option would seem to indicate that Watts is incompetent. The second indicates that he was possessed of fraudulent intent.
I would extend to Watts the invitation to post on this thread to indicate which option is the correct one. He cannot claim that he was ignorant of the nature of his data, because Menne et al 2010 had pre-empted it six months prior to his interview. So I can see little choice other than he didn't believe what his eyes were telling him, or he was hell-bent on trying to alter the image that was burning into his retinas.
> ... because Menne et al 2010 had pre-empted it six months prior to his interview.
I thought he argued back then that Menne et al had it wrong, or didn't have it right enough, or something? Or was that just his band of followers? If true, that would suggest ignorance isn't a viable option - and makes it amusing that the paper claims close correlation with Menne et al on at least one measure.
(Grain of salt, possibly bad memory and all that.)
> ...either did not believe the results of the data he had collected, or thought that some more tweeking at the eleventh hour might give the result that he wanted to put to the public.
Or both.
He was also all for the BEST analysis until he was against it; the evidence certainly suggests that he's looking for evidence to support his conclusions and not the other way around. That doesn't preclude incompetence as well, which appears to be amply demonstrated by the record.
OK, you're foolishlhy optimistic.
Wanna bet :) ?
Take your pick - John N-G was apparently brought on board after the first submission was rejected due to crap statistics (congruent with "Watts is incompetent"
"The second indicates that he was possessed of fraudulent intent."
I suspect he was at least somewhat honest in his early denialism (as strongly driven by his libertarianism as it was) but given his response to his own paper, fraudulent intent, still ongoing, is a reasonable conclusion.
No, John N-G was involved before the submission.
For what it's worth:
I was offered the opportunity to participate in late July 2010, at the rough draft stage (the stated reason was the same as my own: to help make sure the paper was as robust as possible). In attempting to reproduce the statistical analysis, I found that the method of analysis could be improved. The new analysis affected the results for maximum and thus mean temperature trends.
Given the timeline, I suspect that Anthony was basing his ABC interview comments on the earlier version of the analysis.
JNG:
"No, I was invited to participate about three months before the paper was submitted."
Submitted: October 4, 2010.
Now things really get interesting. Before JNG decided to give Tony a hand and help him with his uber stat skillz, Watts had been claiming:
January 2010:
When our paper with the most current data is completed (and hopefully accepted in a journal), weâll let peer reviewed science do the comparison on data and methods, and weâll see how it works out. Could I be wrong? Iâm prepared for that possibility. But everything Iâve seen so far tells me Iâm on the right track.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/27/rumours-of-my-death-have-been-gre…
February 2010:
The NCDC study is flawed, and used pilfered data with only 43% of the network surveyed, see why here.
I can say with confidence that the study at 88% surveyed shows a much different picture, and that paper is being written now. â Anthony
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/26/contribution-of-ushcn-and-giss-bi…
March 2010:
On that note, the rebuttal paper to Menne et al is looking better and better.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/24/complaint-issued-on-amazongate-re…
We are finishing up the final analysis sections. Itâs late becuase we had to scrap the first paper, and re-purpose towards a response to Menne et al thanks to their professional discourtesy. â A
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/24/complaint-issued-on-amazongate-re…
April 2010:
âAfter NOAA/NCDC violated my trust and my right to publish first with my own data with Menne et al, I stopped updating surfacestations.org to protect my rights until my own paper could be completed. NOAA/NCDC erred badly in both PR and scientifically by using data at 43% of the network surveyed, which was so poorly spatially representative that it didnât show the siting signal. Rushing science is a fools errand, but that is exactly what NCDC did. They also used a method which hid most of the siting signal.
The data now is at 88% of the USHCN network surveyed, well over 1000 stations. I have two separate teams doing data analysis independently. The first team has completed its task and the conclusions are in, the second team is within about a week of finishing. All that remains then is to finish the narrative. There are a number of well known names in the scientific community coauthoring this paper with me.
A paper is forthcoming very soon for submission to a journal. When the paper is published, all current data and analysis methods use will be made public online.â
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/04/30/curry-the-finale/#comment-4148
May 2010:
Dr. Pielke Sr. and I, plus others on the surfacestations data analysis teams (two independent analyses have been done) see an entirely different picture, now that we have nearly 90% of USHCN surveyed. NCDC used data at 43%, and even though I told them theyâd see little or nothing in the way of a signal then, they forged ahead anyway. Assuming we arenât blocked by journal politics, weâll have the surfacestations analysis results in public view soon. If we are blocked by journal politics, weâll have other ways.
[...]
Heh. The rural trend they present is different than what Iâve seen.
[...]
In related news. Iâve been made privy to a new surface data set, one that doesnât have the problem of NCDCâs need to show additional warming to keep the cap and trade dream alive. This surface data set uses an entirely different methodology to fix the errors, deal with dropouts, and separate good records from bad. Iâve seen the methodology. I wonât insult everyoneâs intelligence by calling it ârobustâ. Instead, Iâll call it properly engineered.
The best part is, it was never designed with global warming in mind. So thereâs no built in confirmation bias.
And to Mr. Karl, Dr. Menne, Dr. Petersen, and Dr. Easterling (who I know will read this): stay tuned.
Oh, and another team sends word today and thatâs not the only surprise to come. But, thatâs another story for another day.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/19/tom-karls-senate-dog-and-pony-sho…
June 2010:
Michael Duffy: In which direction does the bias lie? Are you suggesting that the temperature has not got as hot as the American official historical record suggests?
Anthony Watts: That's correct. It's an interesting situation. The early arguments against this project said that all of these different biases are going to cancel themselves out and there would be cool biases as well as warm biases, but we discovered that that wasn't the case. The vast majority of them are warm biases, and even such things as people thinking a tree might in fact keep the temperature cooler doesn't really end up that way.
[...]
Michael Duffy: Can you tell us anything at all about the scope of the bias that you're presently calculating? Do you think it might actually pretty much negate any suggestion there's been an increase in temperature?
Anthony Watts: It does not negate it completely, it is a contributor. First of all I want to make it clear that there is an effect from carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, I'm not disputing that. However, what we are disputing is that in the surface temperature records of the US and the world, the effects of urbanisation, the poor siting and a combination of those two can affect the temperature record in such a way that it biases the temperature record upwards.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2010/2920304.htm
So, at this point, Anthony had "two separate teams" that had supplied him with "an entirely different picture." John graciously describes the effort of his predecessors as follows
"I was invited to participate after the bulk of the analysis was completed. I decided to confirm the analysis by doing my own independent analysis. It showed some differences, and we concluded that the technique I was using was better, so after some more testing we went ahead and used it in the paper."
You can draw your own conclusions. I would really love to see how "the bulk of the analysis" looked like before JNG told them it was junk ;)
JNG came on very late in the project. If Eli were to speculate, Watts and Pielke needed better statistics to tease out anything at all. Of course, Eli told them that four years ago, but would they listen?
anonymous said: "I would really love to see how "the bulk of the analysis" looked like before JNG told them it was junk ;)"
Two years of wind, piss and slander dragged out and dragged out while magic mcintyremaths were applied and reappled and rejigged until it was finally realised there was no possibility of that route fooling even the Willis Eschenbachs of this world?
anonymouse included something peripheral to the main discussion here that's interesting:
5/19/2010 - this sounds like an early reference to the BEST effort to me ... he had to eat his shorts on that, too.
I see Judith Curry has a post up "On admitting and correcting mistakes". Funny, Watts and his statements hasn't got a mention in comments at all. In fact, Google searching for blog comments regarding Watts is showing a deathly silence from the "skeptic" world about the paper.
I certainly hope that Revkin, Romm and Cook are all working on commentary on this. Maybe everyone is waiting for Watts' own post about it?
[Steve from brisbane](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/05/anthony_watts_contradicted_by.p…).
If you're waiting for an open and frank revision, from Watts, of the climatological status quo, I'd consider not holding your breath whilst waiting.
This is, after all, the truth that dare not speak its name. At least, it is when in polite Denialist company...
Anthony Watts, if you're reading this, allow me to add my voice to the chorus - the professionals told you so. Now man up and admit that you're on a hiding to nowhere.
"I can say with certainty ..." -- Anthony Watts
"I can say with certainty ..." -- Harold Camping
I came across this impressive quotation of Anthony Watts yesterday:
Those nasty scientists and statisticians are being mean to Anthony.
By the way, Watts' Wikipedia entry hasn't yet been amended to note his latest findings. Come on, citizen scientists, you're being slack.
Hooley-dooley - it is red-letter week, isn't it?
Surely Watts will now cease his efforts at distracting and misleading people about climate science? Or will he have no shame?
Vince, you forget:
"In years to come history books will be written about the grassroots scientists with next to no resources except their wits, who blew the whistle on the biggest scientific scandal of the century and changed the course of billions of dollars, and thousands of careers. Anthony Watts is one of those key men."
That was JoNova, announcing Watts' tour of Australia that took place 12 months ago.
(But seriously, that bit of writing does show part of the psychological appeal of contrarianism to a fair slice of the public - it's the little man having the big win against the establishment; common sense seeing through the claimed science.)
Let's not forget that not only has John N-G churned through Watts' surfacestations project data and found that the professional climatologists were correct all along, but Watts has also shown that the scientific processes of replication and of peer review actually work, and that he is not being censored by the scientific establishment.
The guy has literally proved himself completely out of any relevance or credibility.
Although, as Vince speculates, this slightly inconvenient fact is not likely to shame him into reconsidering the advisedness of his denialist crusade.
Actually, if you think about it, Watts is now in a very commanding position...
If he starts to mutter, amongst the hoi polloi of corporate and other vested-interest denialism, that he is faced with the spectre of a public recanting of their glorious ideology, there is likely going to be a lot of money thrown at him to maintain the charade, if not his convictions.
If Denialism lost Watts, the firmament would be rent asunder, the world would be visited with plagues of locusts and rivers of blood, and there would be cats sleeping with dogs.
Watts has a bargaining chip.
Or... he could do the honourable thing and admit that he was completely wrong in his claims that the continental US temperature record was exaggerated, and thus that anthropogenic global warming was not the problem that scientists have said all along that it was.
"Or... he could do the honourable thing ...."
Very droll, Bernard.
Some might think that if one chose to use attack and character assassination as a method of advancing scientific understanding, then one would ensure that one had the data on one's side first before attempting to topple the edifice.
But of course, we already know full well that that isn't what slime like Watts is doing at all.
Watts asked his audience to donate money for the 2000 USD it cost to publish the paper. This target was apparently reached in half a day. What I'd like to know is how much extra came in and what will it be used for?
While you're enjoying your Watts bash-fest, please keep in mind that he brought me on board despite already having answers that agreed with his expectations. An accurate paper was more important than a paper supporting his point of view.
John N-G: Yeah, Tony never cared much whether there's a paper supporting his point of view or not. Most of his audience never reads 'em, anyway.
Or perhaps that's the only way he could get the actual father of the surface stations project - RPSr - on board as an author, or Christy, for that matter.
Perhaps neither wanted to be associated with a paper that would be ripped to shreds, in particular after the BEST projects dashed Anthony's hopes so deeply ...
An accurate paper was more important than a paper supporting his point of view.
So why doesn't he say so? After misleading people for such a long time, this is the end of it all? No apologies, no explanations, no acknowledgement that previous comments proved to be (very) wrong?
Disgraceful.
That's why John has to appear so apologetic here yet also turn around and "tone troll" attack: Watts is hiding, and so John has to cover his ass.
Rather pathetic, really.
Anthony, I know you are reading this thread. Why don't you pop out and admit you were wrong?
Even if the latter couldn't pass peer review?
Wait a minute - so the line from Watts et al is that although the US warming trend is not caused by biases, it is likely that all the other countries in the world have warming biases that are causing the "phantom warming"?
But Pat Michaels has insisted that it is statistically impossible for all of the errors to lie on one side of the line, and that you must get an exactly 50-50 spread of errors.
I'm confused. Who is right???
Wake. Up.
Anthony, I know you are reading this thread. Why don't you pop out and admit you were wrong?
Anthony will have something to say, as soon as Roger has concocted a fog of words that doesn't cause an outbreak of laughter fifteen seconds into reading it.
> Why don't you pop out and admit you were wrong?
'Cause that's not how he rolls?
> While you're enjoying your Watts bash-fest, please keep in mind that he brought me on board despite already having answers that agreed with his expectations. An accurate paper was more important than a paper supporting his point of view.
John, whilst it is admirable that Watts and co produced a paper that passed pre-publication peer review - genuine congratulations to all concerned, good to see some actual science at last - your comment triggers sniggers because that last sentence gives at least the appearance of the assumption of facts not in evidence, at least not outside of your testimony here.
Watts has a history of promoting results that support his point of view before the work has been completed - and not only his own, but BEST - and if necessary changing his mind about the alleged rigour and accuracy of the work if it subsequently does not support his viewpoint. He has also promoted lots of work of highly dubious quality that supports his viewpoint, and dissed lots of good quality work that does not.
All of that makes it rather difficult to view him as not holding anything a preference for "results supporting his view" over "accurate results", seeing as (for example) he reported some approvingly before he knew they were accurate or complete, and in some cases withdrew his approval after they came out and failed to support his viewpoint.
One suspects that Watts may have told himself and even you that he wanted accuracy in the paper over results supporting his viewpoint - there's has been a lot of "we do scientific rigour here" on his websites that is just not supported by the evidence - but that he never imagined that accuracy would actually mean results confirming the existing science that he has been confidently telling everyone is wrong for so long.
And if he actually has a newfound commitment to accuracy over preconceptions - good on him! But he has a heck of a lot of hard thinking to do about what that actually means beyond the paper itself - for his websites, for his future pronouncements, for the choices of viewpoint-inconvenient results that he fails to promote - and he has a lot of corrections for past actions to issue, which will likely enrage his rusted-on fan base and end the websites.
If he actually steps up and attempts this - then good on him! But if I were a betting person, I wouldn't be betting on that option.
Doh!
"All of that makes it rather difficult to view him as not holding anything a preference for "results supporting his view" over "accurate results", ..."
While you're enjoying your Watts bash-fest
If you don't think that Watts' abhorrent behavior over an extended period of time doesn't deserve bashing, then you are either a fool or an ignoramus. Do you really think that a single action of his -- even if given the best possible interpretation, as you are working mightily to do -- undoes everything else he has done?
please keep in mind that he brought me on board despite already having answers that agreed with his expectations.
That must make you feel very special ... perhaps even beholden. But has it occurred to you that those expectation-reinforcing answers might have made him all the more confident? You imply that he thought that bringing you on might result in having those expectations countered ... do you have any evidence of that? You are trying to spin this as an act of integrity on his part, but your logic fails.
An accurate paper was more important than a paper supporting his point of view.
Your imagination appears to have severe limits.
Anthony, I know you are reading this thread. Why don't you pop out and admit you were wrong?
And when he doesn't, the same question will apply to Nielsen-Gammon.
It seems to be a week since the paper was available on WUWT, and despite saying in the thread that he would be posting his own comments on it within a couple of days, Mr Watts has yet to share with us his insights.
Instead, we're getting fascinating filler like photos of dirt being put on Manhattan.
And continued deathly silence in the climate "skeptic" blogs.
>And continued deathly silence in the climate "skeptic" blogs.
Or any climate blogs. Or any blogs. Or anywhere.
This is pretty big news but Deltoid and Eli's are the only place I've found discussing it.
There was a passing mention in an Open Thread at RealClimate.
Apart from arbitrarily banning those whose remarks he can't handle, the charming Watts is given to violating the service term confidentiality of those who return using their own extant e-mail addresses !
> Apart from arbitrarily banning those whose remarks he can't handle,...
And in today's news, Anthony Watts has banned Anthony Watts from commenting at Watts Up With That... ;-)
> And continued deathly silence in the climate "skeptic" blogs.
Why, it's almost like scientist Watts is persona non-grata, whilst polemicist Watts is welcomed with open arms.
Wonder what hypothesis would explain this behaviour?
> Wonder what hypothesis would explain this behaviour?
Blind faith.
> Blind faith.
Sheesh, Wow, you weren't supposed to give it away so easily. Let them stew for a few days until they admit they can't work it out...then state the obvious.
;-)
Neven says on May 17, 2011 10:43 AM:
Watts asked his audience to donate money for the 2000 USD it cost to publish the paper. This target was apparently reached in half a day. What I'd like to know is how much extra came in and what will it be used for?
I suggested that any extra money be used to purchase reprints and that they should send some to various scientists and other people who would be interested in the study.
> Let them stew for a few days until they admit they can't work it out...then state the obvious.
Unfortunately, blind faith means that they can't see that they can't work it out. Heck, it probably stops them seeing the question.
E.g. how many times have people laughed at Xians predicting the Rapture and then the planet continuing to exist? Lots of times. Yet EVERY SINGLE TIME they make a new prediction, there are many going "Yeah, this time."
I just cut to the chase.
> Unfortunately, blind faith means that they can't see that they can't work it out. Heck, it probably stops them seeing the question.
Yep, that was my point :-)
Hey, I just remembered this evening: Anthony Watts is on the list of speakers at the Heartland Institute's 6th International Conference on Climate Change on 30th June.
Awk-ward, as the young kids say.
So, the question stands - what happens to the extra money?
I know, Lotharsson. Depressing, isn't it, though.
Sigh.
For once I agree with Harold Pierce Jr. The report must be spread far and wide so everyone can see that Watts' theory is wrong and that the US temperature record is accurate.
Please be sure to update Watts's page at SourceWatch with any pertinent info. Thanks.
Oops, link is
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts
From the SourceWatch page:
Now that he is a co-author on a paper that explicitly contradicts the Leipzig Declaration, is Watts going to publicly and conspicuously correct the record?
It's an interesting little side-issue, especially in the context of an exchange I had with CoRev over on [one of Tamino's threads](http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/five-years/#comment-50886), where CoRev was trying to make big of his claim that global warming 'sceptics' do not deny that the planet is warming.
I see that John Nielsen-Gammon has a new post up at his Climate Abyss blog, which opens:
"Our paper has a lot of info and analysis about temperatures and temperature trends and their correspondence to siting class. Perhaps the most important question, âIs the mean temperature trend different from previous estimates?â is answered in the negative, albeit with an asterisk associated with the limited scope of the study. While negative results are useful, theyâre also boring."
Oh come on: just how "boring" is it to see Watts prove himself wrong on a major meme that he's been roaming the world promoting for the last 4 years?? He's had the help of the Heartland Foundation to promote this, for crying out loud; criticised or denounced earlier studies telling him he was wrong; and now that he has the same finding as those, it seems to be a case of "well, let's just not dwell on the past."
As I understand it, Watts has never apologised for his disproved claims on the station drop out issue. His mistakes in both that instance and his pre-publication claims for his pet project (remember, June 2010 - warming bias estimated by him on Australian radio to account for .5 C of increase in US temperature record) are so major that it is hard to see how he maintains any credibility at all amongst his followers.
I'm sure Watts wants us to think it's pretty boring in a "let's-all-move-on-now" kind of way, but this should not go away in any hurry.
Sorry, Heartland Institute, but you knew what I meant...
Steve,
It's not just an apology that is required.
Watts needs to make a correction as publicly, persistently and as loudly, as he made his false claims of deliberate manipulation of the temp record.
If he doesn't it will just confirm how completely unethical the man is.
> Oh come on: just how "boring" is it to see Watts prove himself wrong on a major meme that he's been roaming the world promoting for the last 4 years??
Plenty of this.
Really, John, when Watts has made a huge song-and-dance about his paper about to come out, why is it boring when this massively promoted statement is proven false?
How come when a typo is fixed, it's "HimalyaGate", but when a complete meme is killed, it's "boring. don't bother reading"?
Considering the righteous umbrage with which Watts erupted when Richard Muller said "hey, the mainstrean science was pretty much bang on the money", I'm surprised that Watts doesn't similarly flagellate the release of his own paper, which says the same thing.
Should he not have by now posted a thread exclaiming on his own selling-out to the warmist hysteria?
It's not just an apology that is required.
An apology is also due from John Nielsen-Gammon for the malarkey he posted at #63.
If he doesn't it will just confirm how completely unethical the man is.
There's a problem with saying that someone who has repeatedly demonstrated some quality will confirm having that quality by yet further demonstrations of the same sort. We get from this a smug sense of superiority -- see we were right! But what we really need is outrage, from ourselves and from all who enable such behavior -- people such as John Nielsen-Gammon, who here dishonestly put a spin on Watts of acting with integrity, and dinged us for "bashing" the sack of shit.
I read this blog almost everyday, but rarely if ever post a comment. But I couldn't myself today. These are some of the funniest and sharpest comments I've ever seen on a climate blog. Thanks for the laughs.
Something interesting Fall, et al.s out.
Eli: nice graph(s/ics)!...and the Worzuls...FTW!
Best cases for my scepticism of man made global warming
1) Look at the extremely poor agreement between model forecast and observation.
http://bit.ly/iyscaK
2) Look at an identical warming to the recent one 100 year ago.
http://bit.ly/9kJczm
3) Look at the oscillation in the global mean temperature data.
http://bit.ly/emAwAu
4) Look at a top climate scientist admitting, they give data at their own peril.
http://bit.ly/bn5Js8
5) Look at the global cooling since 2002.
http://bit.ly/fWxIYn
Man made global warming is not supported by the data, and the climate scientists themselves have doubts in private:
6) Yeah, it wasnât so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer â 10 year â period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also.
http://bit.ly/ajuqdN
People might be interested to note John Nielsen-Gammon's latest post:
http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/05/the-strange-question-of-the-…
which to my mind really shows what odd bedfellows he and Watts are to be co-authors on any paper.
Seeing Watts was happy to re-post at WUWT JN-G's post about the DTR aspect of the surfacestations paper, I wonder what's holding him back from referring his readers to this later post. :)
Tony Abbott [pwns Tony Abbott](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckcH0Wrmy74).
[John Neilson-Gammon was interviewed on Counterpoint today by Paul Comrie-Thomson](http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2011/3246444.htm).
It's extraordinary - a lot of talking without actually touching on the fundamental point, until the very end, by which time the idea that the diurnal range was important had been well and truly planted.
Many denialists would have been left with the idea that Watts had triumphed, even if they didn't know how this was supposed to have been accomplished.
"Wrong" really is [the hardest word to say](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkqgDoo_eZE).
Listen out for how PC-T avoids discussing JN-G's comments about warming and climate sensitivity near the end, and in fact [twists it during the interview to being a matter of needing more denialist scrutiny](http://i52.tinypic.com/dxllvo.jpg).
Bernard: I can't listen to Counterpoint. It always ends with chewed door frames and me spitting splinters.
I think that the statement on WUWT that âIs the mean temperature trend different from previous estimates?â is answered in the negative" is decisive.
The smoking gun - of badly-sited thermometers skewing the record - isn't smoking.
It seemed a reasonable hypothesis before the results spoke. Isn't this a good example of scientific integrity: preferring to have one's pet hypothesis refuted than to have it limp on?
Russell:
> Isn't this a good example of scientific integrity:
Unless Watts unequivocally says "I was wrong and I apologize to the climate scientists whom I have unfairly maligned", no.
-- frank
Personal comment: the (personal) irony I'm seeing with what Watts did is that superficially it looks like what I did with my thesis results - interpret one way in the thesis, then after rumination&waffling, interpret the other way for publication (which never did occur, fwiw). Moral of my story: structure your research so that when your quantitative-answer-to-a-qualitative-question result comes out akin to Douglas Adams's "what is the meaning of life" answer (42), it'll be clear how to interpret it.
That is all...