Later On

Climate Denial Crock of the Week

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1. Love that animation around the 5:40 mark. Would also love to see how they did that.

   I don’t think Watts/Surfacestations.org are trying to falsify anything, because they get their guidelines from NOAA’s guidelines, found here.

   http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/uscrn/documentation/program/X030FullDocumentD0.pdf

   That pie chart of the stations and their level of error was floating in the background of the video, but never addressed…

   Watts may have been a weatherman, but I don’t see climate scientists checking these sites (and by checking,I mean actually going there to survey the environment instead of changing a little data here, a little data there to make up for any biases).

   

   Anthony

   19 January 2010 at 4:21 pm
2. I don’t understand what you mean by saying you don’t see climate scientists checking the sites. The sites are all over the country, and when they are checked there’s no public announcement. I believe that they check the sites.

   In any event, as the video shows, the results of the data from the sites that Watts and his volunteers identified as “good sites” matches the data from the total collection. So the data from the surface weather stations seems solid, even though we are not told when climate scientists check the sites.

   You did note that different types of sites have different purposes.

   

   LeisureGuy

   19 January 2010 at 4:27 pm
3. From the FAQ:

   “Q: Why is a TV/radio meteorologist and volunteers doing this job? Shouldn’t this be the work of climate scientists?

   A; Well it should be, but the USHCN has been established since 1994, and in that time, the NCDC scientists managing the network have not done this most basic of quality control checks; visiting each station, doing a photographic survey, and determining if the climate monitoring station temperature and rainfall measurement been compromised by any local influences. While there is a metadata system in place, it is primarily designed to show site moves and instrumentation changes. Remote data analysis and applied statistical techniques cannot replace basic observations in all cases. Basic observation of any experiment and recording of what is observed is the foundation of professional science practice. Likewise, sharing such data is also one of those tenets. Therefore during and after the survey is completed, the data will be publicly available for any scientist that wishes to use it to further analyze the data from these stations and provide appropriately calculated adjustments.

   While a government survey program may take months of planning, months or years more of execution, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce a simple volunteer program like this can easily and without taxpayer cost produce the same or better results, and certainly at a much faster pace. Hopefully this project can serve as a model for a future program administered by NOAA.”

   I actually remember back in the summer when this happened. Watts pulled some copyright BS to get the video removed from Youtube, and Google complied. I was HIGHLY annoyed that he offered no explanation. It took an off-topic comment on his website to surface the issue.

   

   Anthony

   19 January 2010 at 6:42 pm

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