Jccarlton, oh, part of my previous response to MSimon was intended for you, sorry. About Spencer, please don't pretend that you don't get similar chastisement on "warmists" in WUWT comments. I do believe it was you who attempted to discredit several climate scientists here.
MSimon,
Not a bad idea. All that is required is statistically significant data.
Indeed, a PS3 could probably simulate bathwater very accurately. It just couldn't get a couple of dozen random drops of food coloring and a baseball dropped in correct.
In any case Josh, I see you are no longer touting the line that the models are based on physics/chemistry. I agree. They are based on statistical simulations. i.e. pattern matching.
That's simply not true MSimon. The statistical results are based upon running a dozen different models, produced by different scientists, all using known physics.
Because every model uses different numbers. Why? Because NO ONE knows the correct numbers to sufficient accuracy.
I learned early on as a kid when I was in to magic how to flip a coin without it actually flipping, it just wobbles. Very simple trick, most people miss it. I even know how to make it have a distinct ting sound so it sounds really impressive, as if the coin is really flipping (it's only wobbling very fast around its central axis, it even looks like a flip).
So, we know that there is a method to screw up a coin flip (and it surely got many a sucker over the decades), how do we trust that a coin flip analysis is correct?
We have a dozen people all flip coins! Assuming they are all not doing the wobble trick, the statistics will come out 50/50, as one would expect mathematically. What you (and the whole of denialist circles) are trying to have me believe is that
all scientists are doing the wobble trick on climate models, on climate data, on so many distinct aspects of AGW evidence.
This is impossible for me to believe, as a skeptic such a claim would be (and is) extraordinary, and therefore it requires extraordinary evidence. The best people can come up with are private emails that indicate nothing nefarious outside of guys annoyed with the politics of climate change.
That is the beauty of science, one guy could be doing the wobble trick with the data, but someone else will surely come out and discover the truth. And we know this is especially true when the data, both raw and adjusted, is freely available for analysis.
If GISS was wobbling the data, then it would be so obvious anyone who knew how to use Excel could prove it. This is not the case.
And then the modelers tune the models to match what they think past patterns were. i.e. a little less CO2 a little more UV and voila - WE HAVE A MATCH.
What! They don't do that. The initial inputs are based on observations, they even use similar initialization methods.
http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/projects/cmip/index.php
You're arguing that modelers have intuited similar results through pattern matching, when the real reason the models represent the temperature data is that the temperature data has been made statistically significant, and the models are statistically good. Remember, the models found errors in satellite measurement data. The models kept saying "the upper atmosphere should warm!" The satellite data disagreed. It turned out that the satellite data was broken.
For instance no model predicted the last ten years of essentially flat temps. Why?
Flat temps? There ya go again picking small data sets out of larger ones. The last ten years were some of the hottest on record. So now are you trusting the temperature data or are you saying it's broken? You cannot have it both ways, man.
They matched to a positive PDO/AMO and assigned PDO/AMO heating to CO2.
The modelers frick up sea ice melt big time, yes.
I will believe climate scientists understand climate well enough when they get the Maunder Minimum figured out.
Climate scientists have long attributed solar variation to climate. Now that's something that the models most certainly cannot predict to any statistical degree. But they do include it as a cyclical phenonema (GISS may have the highest temperatures of all the models because it includes it).
After all if you can't explain the past how can you have a hope of predicting the future?
There is less data, and a lot of uncertinity in the past. Put CLARREO up. Then complain about data accuracy and sampling and all that foldera.
Not true. The old data has been adjusted colder to make the previous 30 year warming appear exceptional.
No it hasn't, the vast majority of early measurements are baselined at zero. They *should* render them negative, and leave current measurements alone (that way you can't claim that they're "warming" things). But managing trend lines seems to be lost on you guys. I am glad mad_derek here understands it all.
Recent data suffers from UHI and data manipulation. And instrument placement problems.
Now you're just spreading disinformation, establish this claim please. Without us having to go into circles and my having to explain trend management.
Fair enough, but look at MW installed there...
If we had one of those for climate every model would be using the same numbers and parameterizations.
Being redundant, addressed this.
I have been involved in electric motor simulations. There are not fifteen different models. Heck there are not even two. There is one.
You can computationally model an electric motor.
You have to understand that the models are not scientific tools. They are political/funding tools. Because catastrophe = funding.
Then our capitalist system has frick us. Oh wait, the two main contributors of data are guaranteed funding regardless (particularly because their data isn't just used for global climate trends but also for weather).
Suppose the Climate Guys said: it is 90% to 99% natural. There goes the Climate Cartel's gravy train.
It is natural. (A consequence of an intelligent but medium tech civilization).
Suppose they said that humans weren't causing it, you mean?
Then they would have to have a scientific explination for it that removes human behavior from the equation. The denalists grasp to PDO, to solar variation, and even to clouds and cosmic rays. None of these alternate theories stand up to scrutiny. Think of better ones.
The scientists are open to such an improvement of our understanding. (Though you think they are all wobblists.)
BTW the UEA recently released a bunch (not all) of code and data they had been sitting on for years. If the science is open why did they stall the release?
EU (ESA) is sitting on hundrds of GB of satellite data that they won't release. As I said before, I believe this is the EU "Oxford School" mentality. I don't like it as much as you.
The US copyright law has required for some small eternity that American publicly funded organizations and groups release all data to the public domain (I know it's somewhat more complicated than that though).
We are still awaiting the release of exact adjustment methods.
They'll come. MET Office had its ass kicked. If only some other conspiracy would get ESA to acquiesce.
TallDave,
Ha, the physics aren't known well enough to model even things like the monsoons.
Climate prediction is not the same as weather prediction.
Much of GISS comes from GHCN -- which is not released.
You are lying. I posted the link for MSimon, it is there. Google NCDC, use a .gov or .edu domian and you can get it all for free. All of it. Every morsel.
People have been comparing GHCN raw vs adjusted for years now, cherry picking various stations, ignoring station moves of TOD adjustements, and claiming that the data is wrong. But they don't know how to analyze data like mad_derek here.
I never complained it didn't work. I said it was incomplete.
Is Robert's version complete enough for you?
Yes, in America we practice actual science.
In America we practice creationism and pundent worship.
No, you shouldn't, for the obvious reason that temps over 1,000 miles away are likely to be completely different.
A station is on a hot roof. It is moved to a grassy field a few hundred meters away. That is not going to work for you? Probably not.
TOD seems way too convenient an excuse.
Yet the NCDC provides raw and adjusted data and has all station histories. You know what this tells me? That you don't actually give a darn about strong science. It's not an excuse, it's the station history reality. Measuring temperatures at PM ruined the accuracy of the measurements (a box sitting out in the sun all day vs a box that is in the morning; which is more accurately going to represent the surrounding environment?).
Are we really supposed to believe the TOD trend is so much stronger than the UHI trend that the net adjustment is positive?
Uh, no. If you adjusted the PM boxes downward and left the AM boxes alone the trend still exists. The trend doesn't occur due to the adjustments, it exists in reality. Look at mad_derek's graph.
And even if that's true, that means TOD corrections are large compared to observed warming, which means -- again -- gigantic error bars. Who here thinks they did a detailed analysis of what exactly the TOD correction should be for each unique situation?
That's why they do the homoginzation process, to tweak out obvious discrepencies. Got a better idea? Oh right, throw out the data, because you're such a scientifically inclined person.
They don't need to, they only need to limit the positive feedbacks.
Sure. But current observed environmental changes suggests that they don't (ice mass loss).
RC is explicitly advocating AGW, on the taxpayer's dime.
They may use their free time however they wish. I am sure that denialists have attempted to get them in trouble though.
In this case, I'm not impressed with sneery criticisms of graphs from people who wholeheartedly endorsed Mann's invention of a hoaxey stick using the inverted Tiljander series, discredited bristlecones, the debunked Yamal series, and bad principal component analysis.
You're in far too deep to think critically about this issue.
But this is the basis for spending trillions of dollars.
This won't happen. I wish you could get it through your thick skull that it can't happen. India / China won't work it, so the OECD won't dare do it. Simple politics. You base your whole understanding of the issue on this scary thing.
mad_derek, you did excellent work, and since you posted the whole file, if anyone objects they may do so (they aren't because they see that your methods are sound). I hope you shared that with other sites, if I were any good at Excel I'd join your army of guys debunking station myths. My lucky .edu account will always come in handy for that!
All, last reply for awhile, I'm bored of this circular argumentation. Climate scientists aren't wobbly.