What do you think of Anthony Watts and www.surfacestations.org ?

Question

What do you think of Anthony Watts and http://www.surfacestations.org/ ?

Why does he have to post his finding on an internet blog, and not in a respectable scientific journal? What does the temperature trend look like if the only stations used are determined to be of an acceptable quality by Watts?

Answer 1

You can find lots of deconstructions of Watts's analysis like this on the internet:

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.geo.m...

Which is a little complicated because you have to find the images from Watts's site and compare them to the complete data sets linked to in the usenet post above to see how Watts manipulated the data to give the appearance of a problem.  But the bottom line is that even with stations where Watts says there is a problem, there isn't really.  Basically, the guy plays fast and loose with the data, plots it to see what he wants to see, and lulls the gullible into thinking there is a huge problem when there isn't.

edit:  here's another example of reanalysis of the same data Watts uses:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/07/30/s...

Long RealClimate.org discussion of this topic:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=4...

Answer 2

There are studies that show that problems with the observing networks may account for up to one half the warming since 1880 (Michaels and Balling, Michaels and McKitrick, Kalney and Cai, de laat and Maurellis, Pielke and Davey).

Steve McIntyre, that man that discovered the NASA error that 1998 was not the warmest on record also has found many problems Hansen's data:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?cat=54

Whether or not these stations make a difference, if you are a seeker of truth you would demand that they be removed.  These stations are not scientifically valid.  That is just in the  U.S.  what about the rest of the world?

Edit;  JS, The only money McIntyre makes is from a tip Jar in his web site.  But when corporation with a vested interest in alternative energy donate millions of dollars that is o.k. to you   I have heard so much of this left wing commie rhetoric my whole life, that is why I no longer trust the alarmist sources.  Seekers of truth do not attack who said something, but what was said.

Try to use a more credible source than wikipedia.  

By Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post

Kim Dabelstein Petersen. She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia. What does she edit? Reams and reams of global warming pages. I started checking them. In every instance I checked, she defended those warning of catastrophe and deprecated those who believe the science is not settled. I investigated further. Others had tried to correct her interpretations and had the same experience as I—no sooner did they make their corrections than she pounced, preventing Wikipedia readers from reading anyone’s views but her own. When they protested plaintively, she wore them down and snuffed them out.

By patrolling Wikipedia pages and ensuring that her spin reigns supreme over all climate change pages, she has made of Wikipedia a propaganda vehicle for global warming alarmists. But unlike government propaganda, its source is not self-evident. We don’t suspend belief when we read Wikipedia, as we do when we read literature from an organization with an agenda, because Wikipedia benefits from the Internet’s cachet of making information free and democratic. This Big Brother enforces its views with a mouse.

While I’ve been writing this column, the Naomi Oreskes page has changed 10 times. Since I first tried to correct the distortions on the page, it has changed 28 times. If you have read a climate change article on Wikipedia—or on any controversial subject that may have its own Kim Dabelstein Petersen—beware. Wikipedia is in the hands of the zealots.

Answer 3

I think he gets a lot of money to take a lot of free travel.  How can I sign up for that job?

The fact however is that rural stations have shown more heat increase than urban ones.  The "urban heat island" argument is a hoax.

Furthermore, only a small fraction of the earth's surface is covered by land, and due to their planetary coverage and their thermal mass, depth, and mixing, the oceans contain far more of the thermal energy being transferred to the planet.  The atmosphere is where the action is happening and changes will be reflected there as well.  The land surface stations that Watts is photographing are interesting, but they don't factor much into the overall equation.

The ample funding for the global warming denial hoax however, and for the blogs, think tanks, lobbyists, political payoffs ("campaign contributions") and propaganda pros making noise about it is all real, and literally a deadly serious business.

The flow of money starts with the oil industry:

Exxposing ExxonMobil's Agenda: Manipulating Politics and the Public

http://www.exxposeexxon.com/facts/dailyf...

It's easily traced through mandatory disclosures in annual reports as going to these organizations:

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/listorg...

The organizations have people like this, former lobbyists who defended the tobacco industry (another scientific issue where reaction was effectively delayed) churning out junk science:

http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/11...

Fox News gladly accepts and runs the third party creations as if they were news:

At Fox News, a Pundit for Hire

http://www.freepress.net/news/print.php?...

"Objective viewers long ago realized that Fox News has a political agenda. But, when a pundit promotes this agenda while on the take from corporations that benefit from it, then Fox News has gone one disturbing step further"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Mill...

Other news outlets do as well.  Here's an interesting collection of articles which discusses how the U.S. media uniquely supports the false appearance of controversy:

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/05...

The desire to display an appearance of "balance" makes the U.S. media easy for ExxonMobil and friends to influence.  That's why Americans are uniquely misinformed compared to citizens in other countries (it's embarrassing).

So the appearance of debate on global warming is funding from the industries that feel threatened if we do something to save ourselves: the oil, coal and auto industries.  Their junk science is gladly accepted by U.S. news programs, because they want ratings, which are directly tied to what they can charge for ads, and ratings are boosted by nurturing that appearance of controversy.

So to answer your question I think that Watts is an idiot to go along with the oil industry coverup.  Hopefully people like him will eventually be tried in Neuremburg-style courts for their crimes against humanity.  It will be too late by then of course, but the people responsible for misinforming everyone else and delaying world understanding and response are essentially committing genocide, and definitely should be held accountable for their actions.

The evidence against them will continue to pile up over the next few decades.  It's only a matter of time before they're brought to justice.

Edit -

eric c -

Stephen McIntyre describes himself as a mineral exploration consultant.  Wikipedia however discloses him as the former president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. Northwest Explorations Inc. was taken over in 1998 by CGX Resources Inc. to form the oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy Inc.. McIntyre was a strategic advisor for CGX in 2000 through 2003.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_McI...

The Intermountain Rural Electric Association (an energy cooperative that draws a significant portion of its electricity from coal-burning plants) donated $100,000 to Patrick Michaels and his group, New Hope Environmental Services, and solicited additional private donations from its members.  Do you ever check your sources?  Why do you suppose oil & gas and utility consultants would attack global warming science?  The $10,000 bounty perhaps?  The large sums offered by utilities themselves and the organizations funded by ExxonMobil?  Clearly from the payments reported to Michaels from that one deal alone, it's a highly profitable niche that they've found.

Answer 4

Anthony Watts uses the respectable, and currently only recognized, CRN system for reporting weather stations. I believe that this is important as a lot of data is taken from weather stations with ratings around CRN 4 (55%), CRN 3 (18%) and CRN 5 (14%) whilst only a few are from weather stations that have valid data CRN 1 (4%). If the majority of data is poor then that would cause a miscalculation of the data, these weather stations are used in GISS calculations.

Mr Watts does speak in respectable conferences about his finding, most scientist do not have a problem with what he does, and his work is also approved by NOAA.

Answer 5

Respectable scientific journal? That attribute is laughable when associated with the process of projecting climate decades into future.

Answer 6

I'm not aware of any rule that says any study of any kind cannot be posted on the web - except national security stuff. I don't see a problem with it. As far as I know, science should be free to everyone.

Why does it bother you? Afraid he may be setting a new trend? That the NAS may lose control of the flow of information?

I could live with that. If people knew how big the gap is between what scientists know and what they're allowed to report, they'd throw all their current science text books into the garbage and demand new ones. Which would be a good idea. That alone would advance the state of our scientific learning 50 years.

"Respecable scientific journal" !? Like "Science"!? Hahahahaha! Don't want to lose your monoploly, huh? Yes, information is power. But, it's already too late. The people are catching on...as are other scientists.

Answer 7

To be blunt, I think it's fair to characterize Watts as an amateur hack.  Basically he takes photos of temperature stations that look like they're in bad spots, and he does some p**s-poor analysis of the data, and that's about it.  Tamino takes Watts' amateurish data analysis to town in many entries on Open Mind, most of them entitled "How Not to Analyze Data, parts 1-4".

http://tamino.wordpress.com/?s=watts

This is really a moot point.  We've shown here that the surface station data is accurate countless times.  NASA takes urban heat island effects into account by various methods, such as comparing urban station data to nearby rural station data.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/featur...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

All you have to do is look at the data to realize that this is a total non-issue.  Look at the supposed 'good' stations (red) vs. 'bad' stations (green):

http://www.inturnsoftware.com/downloads/...

The final nail in the coffin of this argument is that the satellite data agrees with the surface data:

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/0...

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

I think anyone who cites Watts or surfacestations.org needs to do some research of their own instead of being mesmerized by some pretty pictures that really don't tell you anything.

Answer 8

Your question is answered by the photos showing most stations in NOT ideal locations-- additionally the temperature statistics method is suspect. That's why I have repeated my claim on this topic to WAIT for the Satellite data as the surface temps are not reliable. (even the collection method is suspect!)

Answer 9

Watts was looking at Ground temperature reading.  Many rural temperature readings were lower than urban based temperature stations = "Urban Heat Islands" effects.

However here are two satellite monitoring stations (NASA & Hadley) that chart closely :

http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/...

Answer 10

oh dear, and theres me been using that unreliable satellite data from dodgy old NASA and the Met office. i see my mistake now,  the whole world really is in north america....