Comments on: Climate Rorschach Test

By: skh.pcola

skh.pcola — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:20:31 +0000

Doesn’t matter what the site “looks like” from an orbital photo. I could go out into a million-acre forest, clear an acre, asphalt the acre with the blackest material available, set up a thermometer station, and record wildly elevated temps. What matters is what the site looks like when you are actually looking at the damned thing…like, in the picture above. A frackin’ barbeque grill in the middle of Siberia will still be as hot as one in Tucson.

By: Adirian

Adirian — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:15:20 +0000

Eric, my guess would be that those aren’t precise coordinates. If you zoom out, approximations from virtually any directions can land you in a city. Check out the coordinates at http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=31.06n,+98.2w.

By: Eric McFarland

Eric McFarland — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:11:28 +0000

Site looks rural if you actually map it:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=31.1n,+98.2w&ie=UTF8&ll=31.101599,-98.200006&spn=0.007607,0.012167&t=h&z=16

By: Steve G

Steve G — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:28:03 +0000

I agree with the sentiments about the placing of this station being dubious – just by an ‘eye’ inspection alone. In addition, looking at the graph I find it intruiging that the short-term oscillations before the 2000 move seem to have been completely ironed out. That to me is a warning that something is decidedly not right about its new position.

By: Steve G

Steve G — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:26:13 +0000

By: diz

diz — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:04:54 +0000

While the case studies provided in the "How not to measure temperature" series are amazing examples that seem to border on sceintfic fraud, the bigger question remains "How much does this matter?"

Even most leading "skeptics" seem to acknowledge there has been some warming over the last century.

Is that just a case of groupthink caused by reliance on the same flawed data? Or is there enough other evidence to support that warming has occurred?

By: dearieme

dearieme — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:15:51 +0000

Climate Science doesn’t much resemble real science, does it? Now we need three categories: Science, Social Science, Climate Science.

By: Frederick Davies

Frederick Davies — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:25:00 +0000

It would be interesting to know if the sensor was moved around 1960 too; the temperatures seem to suddenly drop; though the break is certainly "smoother" than in 2000.

How frequent are these sensor movements? Maybe checking on a move that happened 20-30 years ago to see if there is a break in the data before and after could determine if the algorithms are worth anything.

By: JimK

JimK — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:59:08 +0000

"For the record, the GISS opposes this kind of photo survey as worthless and argues that their computer algorithms, which correct for urban warming at this site in 1900 but not in 2007, work just fine with no knowledge of the specific site location."

This is eerily similar to he arguments made by those who securitized subprime mortgages. They believed the broad statistical assumptions about the behavior of a pool of mortgages using complex computer models would offset the simple commonsense observation that each underlying mortgage was a piece of junk. We have seen how well that worked out. Classic example of GIGO

By: Clint

Clint — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:25:39 +0000

It would be nice to have photos over time to "be able to point to an increasing preponderance of 'hot asphalt, car radiators, nearby buildings, air conditioning exhaust, etc.'"

Did the scientist maintaining and monitoring this thermometer take such pictures or records?