More Problems with USHCN Data
Turns out more problems at the United States Historical Climate Network (USHCN) data are raising serious questions regarding the validity of climate change analysis and projections. The USHCN is the largest temperature database and collection system in the world. Much of the research involved in global climate change is based on the US data.
(Climate Stations)
These questions are being raised by a researcher called Anthony Watts who started looking at the changes in types of paint used on the stations. Watts can often be found on Stephen McIntyre’s site ClimateAudit. McIntyre is a mathematician well known for debunking the famous Hocky Stick graph published in Nature by Mann et al. and for pointing out the Y2K errors in the computer program analysis of the data consequently changing the hottest year in history from 1998 to 1934. The infamous Hockey Stick was analysed by a team of statisticians at the National Academy of Sciences (Wegman Report) and found to have serious problems yet it is often still referenced by people like Al Gore as evidence for climate change.
(False - more widespread high-resolution data are needed before more confident conclusions can be reached and that the uncertainties were the point of the article - Mann hockey stick author)
As Watts started to audit them for his research, he noticed serious problems with the stations themselves, serious problems regarding the actual quality of the stations.
He started a website and encouraged other people to go out and take pictures of the stations as well as perform a series of measurements on them based upon criteria on site quality designed by The Climate Reference Network (CRN) and used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) themselves. Some of the inappropriateness of the sites can only be described as disgusting.
Â
(Top - a quality station vs Bottom - a poor quality station, note the difference in yearly temperature between sites)
Watts has now done some analysis on the 33% of the some thousand stations they have audited and the results are seriously alarming regarding the quality of the raw data. Based on his analysis presented at the CIRES meeting:
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(Potential temperature errors based on site quality, 55% +2 degrees Celcius)
As a scientist this is the kind of thing that distresses us the most: poor primary data. If your initial data collection is poor than all the work later whether it is computer analysis or branching projects will be useless. There is nothing worse than this because it can mean years of work gone.
Another serious point is being raised here. If we are going to drastically alter the economies of the world, and cause more poverty in third world countries we’d better be correct about whether anthropogenic global warming is real. Economics is by and far the most important thing to a living human being, plain and simple. It can even affect his or her health.
Recently James Hansen released his computer code for the analysis of climate data after what I see as a serious breach of scientific ethics. For a long time he refused to release the code or answer questions regarding it. After any research is published in an academic journal it is fundamental that the data and methodology be available to other researchers for their interpretation. This is intinsic to the scientific method as all work requires the crucible of critism and is either weakened or made stronger by it. We’ll see what kind of criticism his code gets and whether it stands up to scrutiny.
(We eat from the tree of knowledge at our peril)
You may be right about the quality of the stations. That’s a real shame. Nevertheless, i was under the impression that multiple proxy data were in agreement with the observed surface temperatures and the National Research Council report generally agreed with Mann, though had some reservations about the stats used. Further reseacrh is needed (always!), but I’m not sure that waiting until all aspects of the verdict are in would be wise. Indeed, economic disruption would be harmful, but even more harmful would be a gloabl climatological disaster. You can’t have an economy if you have nothing to trade.
Comment by Necator — September 15, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
What are the climate disasters?
Comment by langmann — September 15, 2007 @ 9:57 pm
Increased desertification, flooding, acidification of the seas.
Comment by Necator — September 16, 2007 @ 12:38 am
What are the benefits?
Comment by langmann — September 16, 2007 @ 12:40 am
To what - increased desertification, flooding, acidification of the seas? It’s not readily apparent. Resource depletion coupled to population explosion?
Comment by Necator — September 16, 2007 @ 1:25 am
No, I mean the actual benefits from global warming if it is real. The benefits may actually outweigh the costs depending on the temperature change, whether it is greater or less than 2 degrees if I recall correctly.
You’ve only been told the costs then obviously. And likely by interested parties. I don’t want to be rude but these kinds of questions are fundamental.
Comment by langmann — September 16, 2007 @ 12:26 pm
Indeed they are. We have a pretty good deal as it is. It seems likely however that a large-scale climatological change will have an inherent negative impact. Not merely on sensitive ecosystems that may recover or be “relocated”, but regardless this would mean the change in migratory patterns of animals, change in plant habitat, etc. Perhaps good 1000 years from now once the new equilibrium has been reached, but in the meantime - chaos. In the near term, increases in ocean levels would likely mean flooding of coastal and low-lying communities, disrutpion of agriculture, salination of crops in flood plains/estuaries. Acidification of oceans is one thing that looks like its without benefit. Various forms of zooplankton that rely on secretion of calcium carbonate to form shells aare unable to do so at low pH. This is already being seen tih corals in the great barrier reef. If the plankton collapses, everything above it in the food chain does as well.
I’m personally not willing to take the risk. Things may look better down the line, but certainly not for our children’s lifetime. I’d rather preserve what we have.
Comment by Necator — September 16, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
Yeah… I generally refuse to comment on these topics because I don’t know enough about the subject however, assuming for a moment that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, how could one possibly argue that benefits outweigh the costs?
Maybe it’s just the new biologist in me, but we’ve got this entire field called Ecology that’s devoted to understanding the interrelations of various forms of life and their environment. They’re already pretty much unanimously saying that climatic change (whether anthropogenic or not) is bad for stable ecosystems. And the field has only begun to scratch the surface of the whole picture of these obviously complex relations.
Therefore, how can one possibly argue something like “Well, 2 degrees of increased temp will expand our ability to farm corn and feed more people cheaply” (speculating here) when, for all we know (and we may have good evidence to argue) this will also cause all kinds of insects to move north destroying countless crops and making us worse off than we already are?
I’m only posing the questions because it would appear that our impact assessment abilities are rather near-sighted. Climate changes happen all the time over the course of geological history, however it’s well known that such episodes can be associated with things such as mass extinctions, which could seriously screw up what it is we’re doing here.
If the evidence for human global warming is so crap, then how does one weigh the evidence that warming of any kind can be ‘ok’?
Comment by Carlo — September 16, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
@ Necator - what happened in Europe during 800-1300 AD when Europe was more than 1′ Celcius warmer than now? (A recent paper in Nature just demonstrated plausibility of this warm period using genetic analysis of core findings I believe). In terms of evolution and ecology this is a relatively quick time. From my reading of history I know that this was a boom period of productivity in European farming, which may or may not be related to temperature…
You’re still convinced the whole thing is true and bad. It may be. Serious questions need to be asked, however, by everyone before we make other people poor. Do you hear anyone asking those questions?
@ Carlo - the projections on the 2′ Celcius increase are calculated from a review study of several economic papers that use the IPCC data (UN) on climate change effects. The review was performed by several Nobel prize winning Economists and leaders in Economics. Sure they could be BS, but like everything else involved with Anthropogenic Global Warming, a lot is projections, untested theory, and computer modelling. It’s not going to be perfect.
Comment by langmann — September 16, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
“- what happened in Europe during 800-1300 AD when Europe was more than 1′ Celcius warmer than now? ”
You’re comparing apples and oranges. The world population was less than half a billion during that time. We didn’t have intensive agriculture using fertilizers and pesticides based on petrochemicals, or internal combustion (or even steam) engines. Invasive species were far fewer in number due to the lack of long-range transport. Europe didn’t even have a free –market system.
As Jared Diamond wrote, all the extinctions of megafauna on all the continents (except Africa) coincide with the arrival of humans. According to Dennett, 10,000 years ago humanity and their domesticated animals constituted less than half of a percent of terrestrial vertebrate biomass. Today it’s 98%. With the desertification that’s taking place (ie expanding Sahara due to bad agricultural/grazing practices), the diversion of fresh water ways, coastal development/erosion, deforestation en masse, it’s less likely that the biosphere will be able to “bounce” back following large changes in global climate - regardless if it’s anthropogenic or not. Fact is, biological diversity is what creates resilience of a specific ecosystem to some sort of shock.
Comment by Necator — September 18, 2007 @ 10:56 am
@ necator: Lots of animals and ecosystems have failed without human actions. Unless you’re stockwell day, the dinosaurs went extinct without our help. As for the temperature change in the medieval age, did polar bears go extint when the temperature rose 1′ more than it is now? No. You’re grasping at straws now.
As to local anthropogenic effects on climate, I completely agree that humans can do that. Dr. Pielke is one of the world leaders in research in that area. He also happens to be skeptical on the issues of CO2 focus regarding global climate change as well as being sceptical of the data. I tend to listen to people like that.
In fact local climate change is proven by those crappy USHCN temperature sensors I talked about in the blog, which show that local urbanization can cause local increases in temperature.
Comment by langmann — September 18, 2007 @ 5:56 pm
Yes, we know about urban heat islands. I don’t think anyone disputes that. As for large extinctions, I’m not taalking dinosaurs and you know it. I’m talking land sloths, mammoths, wooly rhinos, giant kangaroos, great auk, the North American horse (killed off by Amerindians), North American Camel, land croc - just to name a few. All went extinct in the last 30,000 years in a sequence patterning the migration of Homo sapiens. Extinctions are natural - but I see no reason to accelerate them.
As for polar bears, once again you’re not comparing like with like. 1000 years ago we were not in direct competition with polar bears for resources, and we likely didn’t kill the estimated ~1000 or so a year that are hunted now. That, and we didn’t have PCBs 1000 years ago. It’s not just climate change, it’s destabilization of ecosystems by a myriad of different avenues: polution, resource depletion, competition. Leng Tche really.
Comment by Necator — September 19, 2007 @ 7:50 pm
What proof for killing mammoths, recent evidence contradicts that and besides its a hard one to prove c’mon. And you said ALL the extinctions of fauna coincide with the arrival of humans and that isn’t true. Lets be exact. Also other animals have led to near extinction and destruction of habitat.
So why are we so focussed on CO2 if really the more important killers of animals is pollution? I tell you when the Conservatives focussed on pollution nary a peep was heard from the media… and the ironic thing is that because of this the conservatives just moved money away from preservation to fighting CO2.
You’re having a hard time arguing with the fact that the planet was hotter only a relatively few years ago over a very brief period of time, and there is relatively little evidence that it caused huge devastation.
Comment by langmann — September 19, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
Mammoth’s MAY be the exception - and that’s still speculative now. The dominant theory is that they were driven extinct by Homo. It’s paradoxical that all the megafauna mentioned survived 27 ice-age cycles before the migration of Homo out of Africa - yet after man got out into the other continents - extinctions of megafauna. I never said all megafauna, indeed Africa is an exception, likely because African megafauna co-evolved with Homo sapiens. The examples I cited were ~30 species on different continents that went extinct within a few thousand years of the arrival of Homo. Large animal extinctions are only an indicator. They’e just the most dramatic examples of environmental “remodelling”.
As an example you probably recall the Yellowstone wolf fiasco. In the early 1900’s they were extirpated from the region at the behest of local farmers. this led to aan overproliferation of deer. The deer would overgraze the woodland, killing new growth. Lack of new growth meant no new trees and also increased erosion. Increased erosion made the local creekss/rivers silty which led to a decline of trout and also an overproliferation of certain insects and a genreral decline in water qualiy, whihc also coincided with the disappearance of beavers. Reintroduction of wolves in the 90’s was shown to be sufficient to change deer behaviour - however local paochers have been picking off the wolves over the years, reversing the trend.
As for the brief warming ~1000 years ago, again you don’t get my point. The world looked a lot different then. There were only ~400 million or so people, and non of them industrialized.The rate at whihc we fouled the water/air/land was easily absorbed by the local envirnoment. Still - deforestation of Greece in classical times turned a once fertile peninsula into a rock and poor farming and grazing practices expanded the Sahara by thousands of square km in the last 2000 years. Look at lake Chad - it’s nearly gone becauase of water diversio schemes over the last 50 years. What are the locals going to o when the lake disappears? How will they irrigate land?
Finally, regarding the shifting of priorities to pollution - I’ve never been against that. It’s shitty that the media focuses on climate change when there are things like the Syndey tar ponds and the fact that Halifax dumps raw sewage into the ocean. Any environmental policy must be comprehenssive.
Comment by Necator — September 20, 2007 @ 1:36 pm
I’m not sure what the big deal with neolithic hunters wiping out species is. It happened, happened without industry, CO2, etc. Very few animals live with a balanced maxim. All wish to eat and breed, no matter the consequences. I understand that the consequences are usually greater for other animals than it was for us, but in the grand scheme of things, the point of megafauna extinction has no bearing on us now. Apples and oranges.
The fossil record is too long and too fragmentary to conclusively prove one way or the other, that humans were responsible. And it would be even more difficult to follow it to prove that some other apex predator (or virus, or bacteria or protozoan, etc.) wiped out species A through Z.
langmann has a point. Why focus so much on carbon dioxide, when the issue more properly is pollution in general and the contamination of wild and arable lands (and waters and atmosphere). I personally believe that reducing energy usage is a good thing, but more for the reasons of reducing smog (and the like) and to save money. Recently, we put in a new furnace. Not even a super-high efficiency one, but a pretty good one. Our heating bill dropped about $75/month. That’s without upgrading insulation, etc. I live in BC (white rock), granted, and we don’t usually need that much heating, but that is a substantial savings. Considering the upgrade was less than $1000, it has already paid for itself.
UBC has become the first uni in canada (N. america?) to reach kyoto targets. and the admin is most happy about the millions they save each year in energy and waste costs. i believe that more than anything will convince people to change, esp as alt energy technologies mature and decrease in price. buying a compact fluorescence bulb and not having to change it every 6 months and watching hydro bills drop really makes me smile.
i also agree with langmann that the source of data needs to be good for the data to be useful. putting a temperature station next to an air-conditioning unit or on an asphalt tarmac does not provide accurate data. especially when said station was originally somewhere else, but the analyses do not take that into account.
Comment by Darrell — September 20, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
“I’m not sure what the big deal with neolithic hunters wiping out species is. It happened, happened without industry, CO2, etc. Very few animals live with a balanced maxim. All wish to eat and breed, no matter the consequences. I understand that the consequences are usually greater for other animals than it was for us, but in the grand scheme of things, the point of megafauna extinction has no bearing on us now. Apples and oranges.”
Again, missing the point. The point is that we CAN and HAVE caused extinctions and neolithic megafauna are just obvious exaamples. Our spears are bigger now and mechanized - and their are more of us. I would prefer to raise my kids in a world where they can eat well, have freedom but also be able to go outside and see and experience the wonderful things nature has to offer.
“langmann has a point. Why focus so much on carbon dioxide, when the issue more properly is pollution in general and the contamination of wild and arable lands (and waters and atmosphere). I personally believe that reducing energy usage is a good thing, but more for the reasons of reducing smog (and the like) and to save money. Recently, we put in a new furnace. Not even a super-high efficiency one, but a pretty good one. Our heating bill dropped about $75/month. That’s without upgrading insulation, etc. I live in BC (white rock), granted, and we don’t usually need that much heating, but that is a substantial savings. Considering the upgrade was less than $1000, it has already paid for itself.
UBC has become the first uni in canada (N. america?) to reach kyoto targets. and the admin is most happy about the millions they save each year in energy and waste costs. i believe that more than anything will convince people to change, esp as alt energy technologies mature and decrease in price. buying a compact fluorescence bulb and not having to change it every 6 months and watching hydro bills drop really makes me smile.”
No argument here. I do that myself.
Comment by Necator — September 20, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
@necator
it’s not so sure we have been causing mass extinctions in the past. i’m too lazy to check the article, but the media release says,
“A thin layer of carbon and debris laid down 12,900 years ago supports the theory that the extinction of mammoths and other large mammals was caused by an “extra-terrestrial” event, researchers reported Tuesday….”
it’s in most recent PNAS.
so, debate on that is still ongoing…
Comment by Darrell — September 25, 2007 @ 2:01 pm
[...] * It is likely that the effect of Anthropogenic Global Warming caused by GGS on global climate change is low or non-existant as no definitive proof exists, and many peer reviewed articles state there is no evidence. Moreover it is likely that the current land based data is corrupt. [...]
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