In today’s print edition, above the fold, is the item:
Climate change: The Obama administration declares that global-warming from man-made greenhouse gases endangers health.
Note carefully that it has declared and not proved.
At the fold is a picture of snow-covered Mount Diablo, with caption:
Mount Diablo State Park got a big helping of “one of the heaviest and lowest Bay Area snowfalls in 25 years.”
Inside (p. A19) is an article on Copenhagen, and several pages of how people are enjoying the snows and how the area “tied the record for low temps in numerous locations.”
I was wondering if you would share your opinion on this piece
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
The author, Willis Eschenbach, has done an impressive bit of research on the issue. Reading it though, I get the impression of an analysis that can’t see the forest for the trees. Is this process of “homogenizing data” really valid for statistics and science? Is it really legit to go through your data set piece by piece, point by point, and adjusting all the numbers like that? I can’t really imagine that in any other field this would be acceptable, in the sense of giving a respected result.
SteveBrooklineMA,
Wonderful work on that post. Many people sending in the link. (Thanks!)
I’ll be writing about this soon.
Speaking of not being able to make up one’s mind, I can’t wait for your response to figure 8 of the “Smoking Gun at Darwin Zero” blog over at WUWT. I can’t make up my mind what I like the least so wonder about you.
Maybe us regular readers of your blog can have a contest to guess:
Which does Briggs hate the most about how the climatologists adjustments to the Darwin data?
A) Step functions in the adjustment.
B) Positive and negative adjustments at a discontinuity.
C) Moving averages across obviously periodic data (do these guys even know what an FFT is?)
D) Uselessly vague rules about how to homogenize.
E) Daring to use the word homogenize to describe what they are doing.
F) Other
I vote for C.
Drats.
Was concentrating on what to say. Added my comment and then read the others.
SO now have to change the above to Me Too.
Heads may roll at the Chron for mistakenly placing that pix on page one. It also should have gone on page A19. What will the White House say?
“do these guys even know what an FFT is?” These guys mainly are FFTs. That’s rude adjective, rude adjective, rude noun. Rhymes with Watt.
Wow, this blog is oozing with sanity! I’ve half-way convinced my ecology teacher that “a skeptics view of anthropogenic global warming” would be a good topic for my 15 minute end of term presentation (next term).
He’s naturally reluctant, being a low-level warming priest, and wants me to come up with a preliminary bibliography of recent (2007 to 2009) peer-reviewed articles by scientists that support a skeptical view. I’m not finding too many that recent. Can anyone help?
Also, the focus has not been developed yet, but what skeptic subtopics can you guys recommend that have the most solid (and recent) backing by scientists, that would punch the biggest holes in the AGW belief system?
Thanks!
Update on non-warming in Copenhagen: As emergency AGW conference continues, it is perhaps ironic to study some weather information readily available on the internet. I apologize that the figures are not absolutely precise because they are taken from graphs at weatheronline.co.uk. Anyone can check my calculations, which took about 20 minutes and were not taxpayer funded.
In the last 28 years (as far as the online records go back), the highest December temperature in Copenhagen was 11 degrees C and that was back in 1983. Over these years, the average highest December temperature was around 7 C.
First day of Copenhagen: a high of 7 C, exactly the same as the average high of the last 28 years and 4 degrees COOLER than the high of the last 28 years.
Second day: a high of 7 C, the same.
Third day: a high of 6 C, 5 degrees cooler than the December high of the last 28 years.
Fourth day: a high of 6 C
Can someone please point this out to the eminent delegates?