Bishop Hill Muller on Watts
Apr 2, 2012 Climate: Surface Richard Muller is interviewed in the current issue of Physics World (H/T Jonathan Jones). The article is not online as far as I can tell, but there are some interesting comments that I will reproduce here.
Asked by he started the BEST project, Muller replies:
"I lost my trust," Muller says, referring to the alleged actions of the scientists at the centre of the "Climategate" scandal, which broke in 2009. The controversy centred on a series of e-mails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK that led to accusations about the conduct of these scientists, including the way that data were selected in their studies. Although all the CRU scientists involved have been exonerated by four independent inquiries, Muller, having read the leaked e-mails, is still scathing of these scientistsand he isconvinced that, while they did nothing illegal, they are still guilty of scientific malpractice and that big question marks remain over their scientific methods. "What bothers me is the way that they hid the data, and the way that they used the peer-review system to make sure that the sceptics' arguments - some of which I felt were valid-wouid not be published".
And he also has high praise for Anthony Watts:
Muller also had four specific concerns with the scientific consensus on global warming, which the BEST project was designed to address. The first - and most serious, he says - is the "stations issue", referring to a problem highlighted by controversial US blogger and former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts. In 2007 Watts initiated the Sur/acestatiQns.org project, which reported that 70% of temperature recording stations in the US were inaccurate to a level of 2--5°C. MulIer says that the BEST team has now cleared up this issue by showing that when it comes to specifically measuring change in temperature, the 30% of good stations are not significantly more accurate than the 70% of bad stations. "lf Watts hadn't done his work, we would not have reliable data today. The fact that he did that means he's a hero; he deserves some sort of international prize."
The other concerns are as follows:
The second concern Muller refers to i. the "data selection" employed by the three major groups collecting global temperature data: NASA; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US; and the Met Office's Hadley Centre in the UK. Muller says that the number of stations being used between 1980 and the present day has dropped from 6000 to less than 2000, with no explanation to be found anywhere in the literature. The third issue is that rapid urbanization in the regions surrounding temperature stations might have led to localized temperature increases, or what is known as the "urban heat island" effect. The fourth concern, which Muller calls "data correction", refers to the small adjustments that the climate groups make to temperature readings as a result of changes in instruments and locations. Muller says the records describing why individual corrections have been made are very poor.
Reader Comments (59)
diogenes,
How many times can I say this, stations were not culled! There is a drop off in GHCN-M because it was produced in 1992 as a collection of prior available records, and a system of automatic CLIMAT reports was set up for 1,300 or so geographically well-distributed stations going forward. Now, however, we have a plethora of weather records to draw upon, such that we actually have many more stations post-1992 than pre-1992, we can see that this drop-off in GHCN-M didn't introduce any systemic bias.
For an example of the number of stations over time in Berkeley, see slide 4 of this: http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-santa-fe-robert-rohde.pdf
Zeke
"UHI appears not to be a significant contributing factor to modern warming"
The warming or its recording?
Richard Drake, I am troubled and slightly irritated by your fairly constant expressions that those of us who shelter behind a pseudonym while commenting on blogs are somehow lesser beings. I am careful not to reveal myself as I regard my family and my life out in the working and recreational world as utterly irrelevant to blog topics and should not add or detract one wit from anything I write. I always use my correct email address when logging on to comment and any blog host could discover my real-world identity through that quite easily - that's as far as I am prepared to reveal myself, which is entirely my choice. If you choose to write under your own name, that is your choice and should not be used as some kind of banner to wave at those of us who have made a different choice.
I expect my contributions to this blog to be judged on their own merits, not on whether other commenters know my identity.
I have never said that you're a lesser being because you choose to use a pseudonym. I have said that using a pseudonym is like carrying a gun, in a state where that is legal. It makes you not a lesser being but one that has to exercise judgment and self-control in a quite different way. Writing pseudonymously is a choice where you gain some things and where you should also lose some things - namely the right to be as critical (particularly of those using real names, within and without the thread in question) and as divisive as someone using their real name. This is for the greater good, preventing a race to the bottom in argument, and is also much fairer than the alternative, where both sets of people are considered to have equal rights to abuse each other but only one set bears a reputation cost.
The greater good isn't just about the blog itself but something much wider: forming alliances with people with which we deeply disagree over issues to deal with wrong-headed and harmful policies. I gave the example of James Lovelock and worldwide biofuel subsidies in the last week. I've noticed it's normally the pseudonymous who pour scorn on such figures in a way that often torpedoes any coming together. This is grossly unfair and stupid (if the blogosphere leaves such a destructive culture in place, I mean.)
Here's an example of what I mean. In the Friend funding thread yesterday, which begins
someone called Alexander K later writes:
I read that and groaned. As someone else later says in the thread
That was the pseudonymous GSW but it was the right question, given the context, which has to be the best piece of journalism that Leo Hickman has done for many moons.
I wouldn't have minded someone else using their real name making the very negative point about the person Leo Hickman, who is also known by their real name. I groaned because it was you and you're pseudonymous. I'm arguing that we should have zero tolerance for this kind of thing.
Would such a radical change in culture change the debate in places like this? You bet. Would it mean that more people would choose to use real names? Of course, because there would now be a cost to them for not doing so.
None of this makes you a lesser person. Though the comment about Leo Hickman made you an unhelpful one.
Richard Drake.
I literally slept on your reply to my comments re your attitude to those of us who use pseudonyms for whatever reason and have thought long and very carefully before writing this reply.
I re-read the Hickman article re Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, which was the only Hickman article I commented upon; I thought my comment on that article was a fair comment. Hickman, in my view, totally missed the point of Rick Perry's views on climate.
If you are keen to proffer olive branches to people such as Hickman, with his reputation for a blind adherence to the warming agenda and a history of attempting to claim credit where he was certainly not due any, why are you so negative about some of us sceptics who, for good reasons of our own, prefer to use pseudonyms? Is it the fact that some of us do not share your admiration of Dr Muller, who committed a huge breach of trust with Anthony Watts, and other scientists who appear to be preparing their exit strategies from the untenable positions they they can foresee themselves occupying?
After many years spent in the delivery of education and other 'public goods', anyone such as yourself who trumpets any form of 'zero tolerance' demonstrates, to me, a marked lack of humanity and empathy and this sits oddly with your willingness to proffer metaphorical olive branches to the Leo Hickmans of the world. Motes, beams and eyes spring to mind. Why are you not offering olive branches to your fellows who feel impelled to write and comment under pseudonyms?
I do not 'parrot activist press releases' and feel no obligation to 'help' Leo Hickman or any journalist with his record. The fact that he has uncovered through the FOI process and made public an appalling, arrogant and agenda-led waste of UK taxpayers moneys (and I was, until quite recently, one of those UK taxpayers) only tips the scales a tiny bit in his favour in my opinion. One swallow does not a summer make!
Richard Drake, I have re-read your last comment and I now realise you have confused two threads; my comment re Hickman was made on this, the Muller thread. You have obviously read my comment as being part of the Hickman FOI thread, which it was not, and which I had not read when I commented on this thread. As someone once said, "context is everything" :)
Alexander, the error is yours. The comment I was referring to is at Apr 3, 2012 at 10:10 PM on Friend funding, not this thread. Meanwhile Paul Matthews has begun a discussion called Real names or pseudonyms?. Why not put down there your disagreement with what I'm proposing? This should encourage you to lay out what I am proposing, before you disagree with it, which I think will help.
johanna: Sorry to cause such offence but how would you expect me to know you? I would have thought that the whole point of your pseudonymity is that you would know and everyone else would know that we don't know your true identity. But maybe I are missing something pretty important here. Feel free to enlighten me.
Paul Matthews (not a speling eror) is for me a bit of a hero. Having seen other people I admire attacked recently by the gorgeous pseudonymous on here recently - Barry Woods, Richard Betts, Andrew Montford and Richard Muller, to give four rather different examples - I continue to dislike the self-righteous tone adopted by those quite happy to try and reduce the reputation of such genuinely brave people while bearing absolutely no price themselves. Sorry to have to lelt you know that your angry reaction didn't increase my respect for whoever it is that is hiding behind your own pseudonym.
Apr 3, 2012 at 1:08 PM | Unregistered CommenterRichard Drake
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You have carefully avoided the substance of my comment, which is that Paul Matthews (apologies for the speling error!) announced on a public blog that he does not care about whether or not scientists adhere to FOI laws. He may well be a lovely bloke, and I admire your personal loyalty. But there is no getting away from what he said. And there is no getting away from the fact that it is quite possible to take a view on FOI laws, and whether or not they apply to scientists just as much as the hoi polloi (ie everyone else), separate from your commendable loyalty to a friend.
As for the anonymity thing - the Bishop knows who I am, because my full name is in my email address. He would only have to look up a telephone directory or electoral roll in Australia to get my address as well. If and when you volunteer to pay my bills and fund my retirement, you are most welcome to expose my identity to the world. Until then, I challenge you to find any contribution I have ever made to this blog that I would be ashamed of if my name was attached. Au contraire, I sometimes wish that my insights could be more widely known by friends, acquaintances and colleagues ;).
This is a great site to get what I think are accurate temperatures going back as far as 1895. There are many different locations presented for all of the States and this is just some of the info available.
Select a Temperature variable for plot of Mean Temperature vs year
(Only years with 12 months of data will be plotted.)
Minimum Temperature (TMIN)
Mean Temperature (TMEAN)
Maximum Temperature (TMAX)
Minimum Temperature - RAW (TMINRAW)
Mean Temperature - RAW (TMEANRAW)
Maximum Temperature - RAW (TMAXRAW)
Minimum Temperature - TOBS (TMINTOBS)
Mean Temperature - TOBS (TMEANTOBS)
Maximum Temperature - TOBS (TMAXTOBS)
for this range of years (inclusive):1895 through 2011
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?_PROGRAM=prog.climsite_monthly.sas&_SERVICE=default&id=486440#gplot_clim_mon_years