
The International Temperature Data Review Project - mkempe
http://www.tempdatareview.org/
======
mkempe
As a general rule, all scientific papers should make their (raw) data public,
and should also publish their code (any processing of the input data). No
hypothesis should be allowed to stand without both of these legs.

In that spirit, I applaud this project, and I look forward to scientific
publications upholding such standards.

~~~
bsbechtel
Don't disagree with you here, but I would be interested to hear opposing
viewpoints as to why this shouldn't be done.

~~~
snowwrestler
It's just re-reading old ground. The surface temp data has been the subject of
intense scrutiny for years, starting with the competition among independent
professional labs in the U.S., U.K., and Europe.

In the U.S., Anthony Watts sponsored a project for people to send in pictures
of poorly sited weather stations. That started in 2007 and they collected and
reviewd hundreds of reports. The ultimate outcome was that they did not find
any significant difference in mean temperature trend between stations.

Richard Muller reviewed the surface temperature data and also found it to be
reliable and useful, with no signs of manipulation or obvious error. In his
own words:

> Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in
> my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year,
> following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I
> concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the
> rate of warming were correct.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-
of-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-
change-skeptic.html)

Why would this organization re-tread old ground? Because most people don't
follow the subject very closely, so the same doubts can be reinforced in the
society over and over and over again, for political (not scientific) purposes.

~~~
mkempe
You're completely misrepresenting the observations and conclusions of the
surface stations project led by Anthony Watts. [1]

[1]
[http://www.surfacestations.org/Fall_etal_2011/fall_etal_medi...](http://www.surfacestations.org/Fall_etal_2011/fall_etal_media_resource_may08.pdf)

~~~
snowwrestler
No I'm not. I've been reading Watts for a long time. His original hypothesis
in reviewing weather stations (starting with his "how not to measure
temperature" series of blog posts) was that poor siting was allowing urban
heat island effects to create a false impression of warming.

Well, as the paper explicitly states, it does not. Mean warming trend at the
stations they reviewed is the same as for the national network overall. They
found differences in volatility (min/max extremes), which is interesting, but
does not disprove the overall warming trend--which was Watt's expectation from
the beginning.

~~~
mkempe
The surfacestations.org project of Watts is completely different from the
linked project. The OP project is focused on understanding adjustments made by
NOAA et al. (changing the values of past raw temperature data) not on the
quality of location of measurement stations.

~~~
snowwrestler
They come at the same issue from opposite directions.

Scientists make statistical adjustments to the raw data in an attempt to
eliminate or mitigate sources of bias, including siting effects like Watts is
concerned with.

Watt sought to show that siting bias effects were too significant to mitigate,
or were not properly mitigated, thereby calling into question the reliability
of the surface temp data sets that show warming. Instead, the data he
collected showed that actually, even poorly sited stations show a very similar
warming trend.

Since attacking the validity of the station data itself did not provide fodder
for the political campaign, this project seeks to generate vague doubts about
the statistical adjustments.

The agenda is plainly clear when you consider that they bothered to embed a
graph from NOAA, but somehow failed to link to the NOAA writeups that discuss
--and in some cases provide source code for--the very adjustments they are
wondering about.

Version 1 (source of the graph):
[http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.htm...](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html)

Version 2:
[http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/)

------
dthal
From [1]: _The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is the United Kingdom
's most high-profile climate denier group_. Its founder is Nigel Lawson[2].

[1][http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Warming_Policy_F...](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation)

[2][http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Nigel_Lawson](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Nigel_Lawson)

~~~
mkempe
Of course such a project would be driven by people opposed to the dominating
hypothesis.

Nevertheless, the scientific _principles_ at stake are correct. The character
and past of people funding a scientific data review are irrelevant for the
outcome of science.

~~~
skatenerd
Is this true historically?

------
lotsofmangos
The pet project of that reputable and unbiased source, Nigel Lawson.

 _No timetable has been set for the panel to report._

No great surprise. They probably don't want to have the same embarrassment as
Koch's funding of the Berkeley temperature study.

I wait to be pleasantly surprised, but if this research goes against what
Lawson wants to see, I very much doubt he would agree with it.

If it goes against what I would expect, I would be interested. I would love
for global warming to be a myth. The more I look into it, the more it seems to
be pretty solid though.

edit - something I find funny is that between them, Lawson and Thatcher are
two the UK's most effective environmentalists, given they oversaw the
dismantling of the UK coal industry. With the result that much of the UK left
wing believes in some romantic sense that the UK should be digging up coal
still, just so long as we don't burn the stuff.

edit2 - oh, the panel is chaired by Terence Kealey. The man who has made
himself infamous by being against the government funding any science research
or providing any state schooling, is heading a science project funded by a
voting member of the House of Lords and former government chancellor.

------
Sir_Substance
>Although the reasons for the adjustments that are made to the raw data are
understood in broad terms, for many of the global temperature series the
details are obscure and it has proved difficult for outsiders to determine
whether they are valid and applied consistently.

>In order to try to provide some clarity on the scientific issues, the Global
Warming Policy Foundation has invited a panel of experts to investigate and
report on these controversies.

Maybe it's just me, but I read these combined not as "Let's do a proper review
of the methodology", but as "it seems that you are all dense, so we are
assembling a panel to explain it to you in small words without reviewing the
accepted wisdom on the matter".

That would be a shame. I think that people are slinging science fast and
shallow on both sides of the debate, partly because people tend to internalize
their opinion as a pillar of their identity (see: The Greens party in most
western nations), and partly because there are financial interests betting on
both sides of the debate, and they are all providing generous "research
support".

A proper review of this significant point is very important, and it sounds
like it's off to a biased start.

