For what it’s worth:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
[quote]From that site:
In step 1, if there are multiple records at a given location, these are combined into one record; in step 2, the urban and peri-urban (i.e., other than rural) stations are adjusted so that their long-term trend matches that of the mean of neighboring rural stations. Urban stations without nearby rural stations are dropped.
[\quote]
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
On the satellite data: You don’t seem to have read my meaning as written. I was stating what we are left with at this point. It is not the case that results from the satellite data match the hopelessly-mishandled surface station data. The latter, however, is what has been given more weight.
[/quote]
Fair enough, bad on me. There was a study (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1114772v1) which noticed orbital drift, which meant that tropical satellites were actually taking readings at night, rather than during the day.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
It is already a known fact that these “scientists” are not only utterly cavalier about whether what they say is true (Glaciergate) but in fact have worked hard to massage out of the data the result they wanted. In the comments field of computer code for their models, notations have been found explaining that a given thing, for example bandpass parameters for a given filtering, have to be done exactly this way to get the desired result. Which is to say, a dramatic finding of warming.
Others, in the illegally deleted e-mails, boasted of clever tricks they had found to bolster the amount of warming that could be claimed. (Yes, I know, they now say that that just meant that the math was great, and supposedly not that they had to try many possible methods to get the result they wanted, and then – of course – went with that method.)
[/quote]
Glaciergate was horseshit, I’m not going to lie. If you are quoting pop-science magazines (New Scientist) at a UN hearing, you deserve to get burned. However, claiming that CRU tried many methods and went with the one that gave the result they wanted is unfounded.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
You credit people like this when unnecessarily throwing out all these weather stations in naturally colder places of being certain to exactly compensate for this, if that were even possible to do with certainty? I don’t. Even if they did try honestly, it would be horrible science. Given what we have learned lately, it’s unreasonable to assume with confidence they worked to avoid introducing bias in favor of their desired outcome.
But even if we granted that they did, it would be horribly and unnecessarily bad science – just downright stupid actually – compared to using the data that they are choosing not to use, but which used to be included.
If we’re talking about one individual, downright stupid things can happen without fraudulent intent. This could even be the case with a small group. Stupidity can be contagious sometimes, or a group may have coalesced around each other precisely because they all are stupid, and better scientists avoided them for that reason.
But when it’s this many? No. Something like this cannot have been done simply out of not knowing better.[/quote]
So it is more plausible that virtually every climatologist got together and agreed that they were going to commit mass scientific fraud and dupe the entire world? Maybe, but it seems unlikely.
[quote]cherub_daemon wrote:
Agreed, after a fashion. Obviously, the more data the better, assuming that it is all robust. However, while some rural stations have been gotten rid of, it’s not like they’re using NYC data to model North Dakota.[/quote]Um, did you read the article?
It IS like they’re using NYC data to model North Dakota.
As an example cited in the article, they use low-altitude data from Peru and in the Amazon to interpolate temperatures that they assign to Bolivia, a high-altitude country. Rather than actually using measurements from Bolivia.
They use warmer Canadian locations to interpolate temperature for colder regions, regardless that actual measurements are available for those locations and were used as part of the average in the past.
They use largely urban stations to model an average for the Earth as a whole. Regardless that the percentage of the Earth’s surface area that is urban is extremely low, and regardless that there are a very large number of rural stations for which data is available and for that matter used to be used.
Yes, it is like using NYC data to model North Dakota.
There is more but really the thing to do would be to read the article previously linked.
For convenience, it is: Home | Vancouver Sun
As for your assumption that it is unlikely for scientists in a given field to engage in group-think and tend to shut out lines of thinking contrary to their paradigm, that really is not the case. Actually it is the norm in many fields, and to some degree even most fields.
But ordinarily there is not this utterly unscientific mistreatment of data and utter lack of care for validation of actual predictive ability of computer models, let alone while pretending great truth and vast importance to the predictions.
Instead, wrong but widespread ideas last for a while, usually till that generation of scientists dies off (if desired, see The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for a treatment of this), simply out of closed-mindedness, turf protection, and for these and other reasons not having the psychological drive to pay necessary attention to data which would point a more open mind into another direction.
This is so even when grant money is not involved.
When grant money and entire careers are based on finding yet further support for past claims, and impaired by findings of weakness to those claims, this makes things even worse.
It doesn’t always work to protect a thing by claiming that it’s being wrong requires conspiracy, therefore the person disagreing with you is a conspiracy theorist, therefore you are right and he is wrong.
Yes, groups of people can in fact wind up acting corruptly or simply wrongly in their mutual interest without bizarre and unlikely psst-psst-psst-psst-psst whispered things going on in undisclosed locations.
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Big man, have you heard of the new legislation to eliminate free parking EVERYWHERE IN THE STATE? Yes, some douche bag piece of shit Democrat from Long Beach wants to make it mandatory to pay for ALL parking in the state, even outside your residence. So in other words, the only free parking would be in your own driveway. If this passes, people will leave the state in floods…
Not even Hollywood could script shit this insane. [/quote]
Sifu was right. He said America was in danger of becoming just like Britain.
You guys have no idea, no idea how stressful and infuriating this whole ‘paying for parking’ is.
If it does happen, I feel sorry for you.
[/quote]
I am not sure if your post is sarcastic or not, I cannot tell your tone, but the whole point of this is to deter people from driving. They want to make is so uncomfortable to the point where you take mass transit to go everywhere. They want you to depend on the government for everything, of which they control. Shit just ain’t right.
I know, I did read it. I’m actually considerably more annoyed at the editorial tone of the CanWest hack that wrote it than I am at DAleo and Smith, who are pretty sharp, from looking at their own stuff. Sorry if my frustration with the article bled though.
Smith (who writes as Chiefio) is more circumspect in his own stuff, and he asks questions that I’d like to see answered. Though, I’d really like him to write it up since he’s clearly capable.
My NYC/North Dakota crack was made w.r.t. the urban/rural issue you cited, not the altitude issue such as in Bolivia, or a latitude bias. Sorry I wasn’t clear, and I should have cited the Sun article explicitly.
My assumption is that the model uses historical information about the relationship between Site A and Site B to fill in gaps in the data. Why are there gaps in the data? Dunno. I can’t answer that. Concerns about access or robustness of the data from that site? Microclimate issues? Conspiracy? Hell if I know.
My assumption, Pollyanna though it may be, is that a group of people who seem to be taking account of urban effects assiduously are probably doing the same thing w.r.t altitude and location effects.
Why care about the editorial tone? It is the facts that are of concern.
It’s stunning to me, frankly, that anyone working in science could defend now omitting all this data which is still available and was used for years being compared to. Particularly when the entire reason for their work and claims being considered highly important is the difference that they claim to be measuring.
If wanting to compare different time points, as much as possible one should use the same instruments, locations, and methods as were used at those time points. I would think every scientist, at least those that work with experimental data, knows this.
When those instruments are still available, the data is still available, but one chooses not to use it, there had better be a provided reason for that. Particularly if your substituted sources for data could easily generate a systematic difference that changes outcomes in a way supporting your theory.
And why you assume they validated the omission, I cannot understand. What is your evidence that they did?
Can you give one good reason why to omit all these stations which are still providing data and which were used in the averages generated for past years now being compared to?
(I don’t see it being a possible good reason that the very large number and very high percentage of stations dropped were dropped for reasons of “concerns about access or robustness of the data from that site? Microclimate issues?” A few sites, sure. But the great majority? Not plausible. Further, as for quality of data, it isn’t plausible that urban rooftop sites, etc, are thought to be on average less affected by microclimate issues than remote rural sites are.)
Can you give one good reason why, if choosing for whatever reason to greatly reduce the number of stations being used to generate an average, to allow the average of the characteristics of these stations to substantially change, let alone to more southernly, lower altitude, and more urban?
Other than wanting to see the average go higher so as to support one’s published theories, help raise the alarm levels, increase one’s importance or the importance of one’s organization, and get more grant money, that is.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
It doesn’t always work to protect a thing by claiming that it’s being wrong requires conspiracy, therefore the person disagreing with you is a conspiracy theorist, therefore you are right and he is wrong.
[/quote]
You’re right. I know you’re not a kook. I got a little intellectually lazy near the end of that marathon.
Or let me put it better:
Wouldn’t it absolutely, definitely, no doubt be better, if wanting to compare say 2009 temperatures to say 1989 temperatures, to use those stations that were in existence in 1989 and in 2009 and compare those results?
Particularly when that would be using a much greater number of stations than with the method they have instead chosen, ignoring the great majority of the data available?
How is it better to instead use a quite different set of stations, with different average characteristics, for 2009 than for 1989, omitting most of the stations used for the 1989 average regardless that the 2009 data actually was produced and is available?
(Other than being better because of generating an answer that supports one’s theories better.)
It can’t be because there was so much money for climate studies in the 70’s and 80’s that they could afford to input the data from 1000+ stations into their computers, but now climate study is cash-strapped and can’t afford to input the data and so now they are forced to limit themselves to only a small fraction of it. That would be ridiculous.
What is it you’re seeing here to justify their now, and also in recent years, not using the data from these very many stations, instead using a far smaller set with considerably different characteristics than for the years they are comparing to?
Other than just relying on blind faith for the justification, despite the smoking gun.
Sorry for the length of the several posts largely saying the same thing, but perhaps this one sums up the heart of the matter better.
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Big man, have you heard of the new legislation to eliminate free parking EVERYWHERE IN THE STATE? Yes, some douche bag piece of shit Democrat from Long Beach wants to make it mandatory to pay for ALL parking in the state, even outside your residence. So in other words, the only free parking would be in your own driveway. If this passes, people will leave the state in floods…
Not even Hollywood could script shit this insane. [/quote]
Sifu was right. He said America was in danger of becoming just like Britain.
You guys have no idea, no idea how stressful and infuriating this whole ‘paying for parking’ is.
If it does happen, I feel sorry for you.
[/quote]
I am not sure if your post is sarcastic or not, I cannot tell your tone,[/quote] I never do sarcasm so you should always go for the other options.[quote] but the whole point of this is to deter people from driving. They want to make is so uncomfortable to the point where you take mass transit to go everywhere.
They want you to depend on the government for everything, of which they control. Shit just ain’t right.[/quote]My failure in communication. Whenever ‘pay for parking’ arises I jump with a punch - I detest the British Government with their stealth taxes on this issue.
Of course, they cry a noble cause for their sanctions just like in London where the “congestion charge” ( which the American Embassy is “in” and they refuse to pay for it and the Mayer of London pledged with Obama to pay 3.5 million BRITISH POUNDS America “owes the citizens of London” on congestion charges and parking penalties - and I love it that the Americans and other Embassies are not budging, total penalties should amount to 28 million GBP!!!
And I hope Central London administrators never see that money ) and higher parking charges and absurd penalties to discourage people from driving into Central London.
It starts as a noble “purpose” and it becomes a covert form of theft as they make a lot of mistakes in “running” this business ( which is what it really is ) and we end up losing our money to their administrative mistakes when they know this is clearly abuse of power.
Perhaps you have no experience of this “no free parking” system and how it works for the Government to take our money, so you won’t know what I am on about and the indignation I and many more other Londoners experience with what we all call this “day light robbery”.
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
Whenever ‘pay for parking’ arises I jump with a punch - I detest the British Government with their stealth taxes on this issue. Of course, they cry a noble cause for their sanctions just like in London where the “congestion charge” ( which the American Embassy is “in” and they refuse to pay for it and the Mayer of London pledged with Obama to pay 3.5 million BRITISH POUNDS America “owes the citizens of London” on congestion charges and parking penalties - and I love it that the Americans and other Embassies are not budging, total penalties should amount to 28 million GBP!!!
And I hope Central London administrators never see that money ) and higher parking charges and absurd penalties to discourage people from driving into Central London.
It starts as a noble “purpose” and it becomes a covert form of theft as they make a lot of mistakes in “running” this business ( which is what it really is ) and we end up losing our money to their administrative mistakes when they know this is clearly abuse of power.
Perhaps you have no experience of this “no free parking” system and how it works for the Government to take our money, so you won’t know what I am on about and the indignation I and many more other Londoners experience with what we all call this “day light robbery”.
[/quote]
Hmm… what you need is a Batmobile you can drive into the city, that they can do nothing with. And when you want to leave, it simply rolls over and pushes aside the police vehicles to come pick you up, and you do the same to any remaining ones as you depart their attempted oppression.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Hmm… what you need is a Batmobile you can drive into the city, that they can do nothing with. And when you want to leave, it simply rolls over and pushes aside the police vehicles to come pick you up, and you do the same to any remaining ones as you depart their attempted oppression.[/quote]
I knew it! You are Batman!
By the way, Bat Roberts ( Now I see you speeding in a Kawasaki Batbike ) I live in the city, and being in the congestion charge zone I, like the Embassies, have to pay not only to have a car in this zone but also to park in front of my house.
Thank you for trying to cheer me up and make me smile. 
That is terrible.
I only once had to (almost) face something like that.
Again, at UF. UF then had a President who was a horror but who had almost everyone deceived. What had happened was, a serial killer a number of years back had killed a number of UF students off-campus. Lombardi, the person in question, made a name for himself by his show of concern. He installed phone banks so that students could more easily call home to assure their parents they were okay.
As if UF were a third world country where it was incredibly difficult to find a telephone.
He also created a UF Police Department, which for starters is the culprit in the famous (in the US, anyway) “Don’t Taze me, bro!” incident.
For this he became a God, and could do no wrong in the eyes of most.
Never mind that none of these acts would have made the slightest difference in the murders that actually occurred, did not provide any real practical help afterwards, and would be unlikely to accomplish anything toward reducing risk of a repeat similar crime.
ANYWAY, Lombardi was quite likely very similar to your British politicians in many of his views. He was quite determined to make UF an automobile-free zone. Never mind that no one else wanted this: he did.
The campus is quite large; there are many people who need only to go to some place roughly, let’s say, in the middle of the campus and are coming from a long distance to do so. The idea is insane. His only stated reason for doing it was that Ivy League universities supposedly were no-car zones. However, the only one that I’ve visited had a relatively tiny campus. And who cares what the Ivy League universities do.
(Lombardi also had a high priority of converting UF to being a private university, but that is another topic.)
Lombardi did succeed in imposing extreme difficulties in parking at UF during the time I was there. A high decal fee, and just unbelievable enforcement if there was the slightest thing about your parking that was deemed wrong.
Except of course, for The GAME. Oh, if it was THE GAME then anyone could drive onto the campus and park anywhere, probably even in flower beds, and the UF Police would only smile. Because The GAME is much more important than merely needing to park your car so you can learn something.
Not as bad as your situation, but for a number of years, quite trying with the parking. And due simply to a politician-type. It would have been simple enough to build enough parking garages. But he was opposed to this, of course.
I was reading with great suspense and anticipation ( on account of the serial killer) until I read this: [quote]Except of course, for The GAME. Oh, if it was THE GAME then anyone could drive onto the campus and park anywhere, probably even in flower beds, and the UF Police would only smile. Because The GAME is much more important than merely needing to park your car so you can learn something.[/quote] It made me burst out in laughter! I love your writing style; it keeps me on my toes and also the way you challenge posts - it requires of me to raise my game and I am grateful for that.
Lombardi is a philistine. 
Sometimes I’m concerned that I may try people’s patience with my occasional utterly off-topic posts within threads, generally ranting about one thing or another, e.g. banishment of alligators or automobiles from campus. This one in particular I thought might have been going too far. Glad you liked!