Hawking: 'Trump could turn Earth in to Venus'

[Harte]

1 hour ago, Doug1o29 said:

A second special prosecutor would have to come from the FBI and that ain't happenin'.  Trmp has no authority to create a govt-paid special prosecutor, but he could put together a special team at his own expense.

"Trump??"

It's the Senate Judiciary Committee, Doug, not the President.

Did you not even read what's written at the link?

Harte

[lost_shaman]

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

As I have already explained, as further data is added, the slope of the line increases.  That's because most of the incoming data is from the 1880s and 1890s.  You add more low values at one end of a line, the steepness of the line gets greater.  Just high school arithmetic.

 

That is not what is happening here. This is not the inclusion of new data, this is the adjusting of existing data. 

 

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

So you're right:  those two graphs are biased.  But the 2009 graph is less-so than the 2000 graph. 

You can't say that. You don't know why those adjustments were made. 

 

Here is the short article that the gif I posted came from. NASA GISS: adjustments galore, rewriting U.S. climate history

Edited August 2, 2017 by lost_shaman

[lost_shaman]

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Sorry, but you haven't cited a source to refute this, either. 

How do you think I can cite something to refute nonsense that never happened?

[lost_shaman]

Here is another case of temperature tampering in the news today involving the Australian Weather Bureau (BOM).

Australia Weather Bureau Caught Tampering With Climate Numbers

This was not the first time. several years ago they were also caught 'adjusting' the temperature records to show a nonexistent warming trend.

Australia Government Climate Office Accused Of Manipulating Temperature Data
 

Quote

 

“The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data,” Booker writes. “In several posts headed ‘Data tampering at USHCN/GISS,’ Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time.”

“These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on ‘fabricated’ data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century,” Booker adds.

 

 

[RoofGardener]

13 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Special prosecutors are paid to find things to prosecute......

Yeah, and so was the Witchfinder General !

Ok.... jesting apart... I take your point(s).

[+and-then]

On 7/19/2017 at 7:26 PM, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

The really sad thing is that we live in a world where people think they have to hide scientific information over fears of what the government might do with it. That should never be necessary in a democracy. 

When the data is disputed by equally qualified scientists and said data is being used for a political end, controlling its dissemination seems prudent.  The Left/Prog leadership in the U.S. are well known for crafting a narrative and having their lap dogs in the media hawk it 24/7 like the world is coming to an end.  Ultimately, when the AGW crowd admit that if they got everything they are asking for from the governments of the world, it would only make about one degree of change (that's from memory, I stand to be corrected) I call BS and stick with the old axiom - "follow the money" and guess where most of it is coming from?  

Warming may turn out to be as terrible and destructive as we've been told but on the list of dangers to humanity in the short-run, it doesn't make the top five, IMO.  We'll be lucky not to turn the planet into a cinder or a block of ice because of plain old human nature in the coming decade.  

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

4 minutes ago, and then said:

When the data is disputed by equally qualified scientists and said data is being used for a political end, controlling its dissemination seems prudent.

Scientific data should not be hidden. If somebody doesn't agree with the data they should present a case as to why it is wrong, not hide it.

4 minutes ago, and then said:

 The Left/Prog leadership in the U.S. are well known for crafting a narrative and having their lap dogs in the media hawk it 24/7 like the world is coming to an end.

Sorry to have to tell you this, but the US is not the world. What the US left does is irrelevant to a discussion about the science behind global climate change.

4 minutes ago, and then said:

 Ultimately, when the AGW crowd admit that if they got everything they are asking for from the governments of the world, it would only make about one degree of change (that's from memory, I stand to be corrected) I call BS and stick with the old axiom - "follow the money" and guess where most of it is coming from?  

What money are you talking about ?

Is it the large amounts of money paid by the major oil companies to fund climate change sceptics ? 

4 minutes ago, and then said:

Warming may turn out to be as terrible and destructive as we've been told but on the list of dangers to humanity in the short-run, it doesn't make the top five, IMO.  We'll be lucky not to turn the planet into a cinder or a block of ice because of plain old human nature in the coming decade.  

So we should just wait and see. If it turns out that climate change is a big deal we should just shrug and say "Its too late now".

Today we have reached a point where we can actually do something about it without spending huge amounts of money. Alternative energy sources are now cheap enough to be competitive with fossil fuels.

I know you are a firm believer in the end of the world, but some of us aren't that pessimistic.

[+and-then]

Just now, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

Sorry to have to tell you this, but the US is not the world. What the US left does is irrelevant to a discussion about the science behind global climate change.

I don't think that you're sorry in the least to say it.  What EITHER party in the U.S. does is relevant when the issue is down to fleecing Americans for a cause they aren't unified on.  As I said, AGW doesn't make the top five of a list of potential catastrophes we face in the short term.

 

4 minutes ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

I know you are a firm believer in the end of the world, but some of us aren't that pessimistic.

Then what you "know" is incorrect.  You, like so many others here, never actually read what I write.  You begin but at some point, your mind closes and you "classify" me as this or that type of nut-job.  FTR, I do NOT believe in the "end of the world".  What is coming is a catastrophic global war that will probably begin regionally.  Nukes will probably be used on a very small scale and that will scare the hell out of everyone.  A peace will follow and when it is broken, all hell breaks loose.  Now, while you seek out your favorite emoticon   ( ), maybe you could 'splain to me what is so inherently impossible about that little prediction?  Hmm?  

I mean, global wars could never happen today, right?  Shrinking vital resources couldn't possibly cause flare-ups.  A world economy on the brink of collapse wouldn't lead governments to attempt to fight their way out of the problems of debt, could they?  And the proliferation of the worst and most destructive weapons we've ever conceived couldn't lead to an unstable government or worse, individual, to play brinksman and miscalculate, could it?

The real irony here is that you "science will fix everything in time" types don't even recognize that you are employing a level of faith equal to or greater than religious people.  You just have a different object that you pin your hopes on.  You think of mankind's better intentions as a solution, I think of it as human nature and that, sadly, has never changed.

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

6 minutes ago, and then said:

I don't think that you're sorry in the least to say it.

Actually I am sorry to have to repeat something that should be obvious.

6 minutes ago, and then said:

 What EITHER party in the U.S. does is relevant when the issue is down to fleecing Americans for a cause they aren't unified on.

What I said is that politics is irrelevant to a discussion about the science behing global climate change. 

6 minutes ago, and then said:

 As I said, AGW doesn't make the top five of a list of potential catastrophes we face in the short term.

AGW is not just a potential catastrophe, its happening right now. I don't expect you to agree with that though.

6 minutes ago, and then said:

 

Then what you "know" is incorrect.  You, like so many others here, never actually read what I write.

So you didn't write this:

46 minutes ago, and then said:

   We'll be lucky not to turn the planet into a cinder or a block of ice because of plain old human nature in the coming decade.  

 

6 minutes ago, and then said:

 What is coming is a catastrophic global war that will probably begin regionally.  Nukes will probably be used on a very small scale and that will scare the hell out of everyone.  A peace will follow and when it is broken, all hell breaks loose.  Now, while you seek out your favorite emoticon   ( ), maybe you could 'splain to me what is so inherently impossible about that little prediction?  Hmm?  

I mean, global wars could never happen today, right?  Shrinking vital resources couldn't possibly cause flare-ups.  A world economy on the brink of collapse wouldn't lead governments to attempt to fight their way out of the problems of debt, could they?  And the proliferation of the worst and most destructive weapons we've ever conceived couldn't lead to an unstable government or worse, individual, to play brinksman and miscalculate, could it?

I never said that there isn't going to be wars. Of course there is, but small scale wars aren't the same as "turn the planet into a cinder or a block of ice" is it ?

6 minutes ago, and then said:

The real irony here is that you "science will fix everything in time" types don't even recognize that you are employing a level of faith equal to or greater than religious people.  You just have a different object that you pin your hopes on.  You think of mankind's better intentions as a solution, I think of it as human nature and that, sadly, has never changed.

Why is it wrong to be optimistic ?

Isn't it better to appeal to the better parts of human nature, rather than just give up and say we are just evil at heart ?

By the way science doesn't need faith, science is measurable, we can see what works and what doesn't. 

[Doug1029]

14 hours ago, Harte said:

"Trump??"

It's the Senate Judiciary Committee, Doug, not the President.

Did you not even read what's written at the link?

Harte

Ordinarily, special prosecutors come from the executive branch (FBI).  The Senate Judiciary Committee has said they would hire Mueller if Trmp fires him.  They have the authority to run their own investigation.  But Trmp is trying to get an investigation of Hillary Clinton going as a distraction from his own troubles.  He doesn't have that authority as President, but he could do so as a private citizen.

I wasn't talking about the SJV.

Doug

Edited August 3, 2017 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

14 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Here is the short article that the gif I posted came from. NASA GISS: adjustments galore, rewriting U.S. climate history

All I had to read was the title:  Anthony Watts is a paid industry shill.  Much of what appears on his site is outright false.  It's purpose is to deny and mislead the public on the subject of global warming.  And you fell into the trap.

How about you post some scientific articles that come to that conclusion.  Watts' contributors are not data or climate professionals, but they are skilled at deception.

Doug

[Doug1029]

14 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Here is another case of temperature tampering in the news today involving the Australian Weather Bureau (BOM).

Australia Weather Bureau Caught Tampering With Climate Numbers

This was not the first time. several years ago they were also caught 'adjusting' the temperature records to show a nonexistent warming trend.

Australia Government Climate Office Accused Of Manipulating Temperature Data
 

 

The first reference is more of Watts' bs.

The second one is the Daily Caller.  It's a newspaper and publishes anything it thinks might be of interest to its readers.  Note that it didn't say that there was data tampering, just that the Australian Climate Office was accused of data tampering.

 

 

“These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on ‘fabricated’ data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century,” Booker adds.

 

Quite the contrary.  I have the actual raw data for the US.  The low-point, before warming, occurred in 1910.  There was pretty much a continuous rise in temps through 1952, with a slight "hiccup" in the early 1930s and a "bump" in 1937.  Temps leveled off through 1965, dipping slightly in the late 1960s.  They then trended slowly upward to 1976 when the next temperature excursion began.  They peaked in 1998 and trended slightly downward through 2005, then started to rise again.  There was a recent spike over the last two years that has now ended.  Temperatures are once again trending slowly upward.  Superimposed on all this are several cycles of hot and cold temps, one of which appears to be the Solar Cycle and another of which appears to be the Chandler Wobble.

You can learn more than you ever wanted to know about climate here:  https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/

That site includes both summaries and raw data.  Actually checking those numbers is a herculean task.  Have fun.

Doug

[Doug1029]

 

2 hours ago, and then said:

When the data is disputed by equally qualified scientists and said data is being used for a political end, controlling its dissemination seems prudent.  The Left/Prog leadership in the U.S. are well known for crafting a narrative and having their lap dogs in the media hawk it 24/7 like the world is coming to an end.  Ultimately, when the AGW crowd admit that if they got everything they are asking for from the governments of the world, it would only make about one degree of change (that's from memory, I stand to be corrected) I call BS and stick with the old axiom - "follow the money" and guess where most of it is coming from?  

Warming may turn out to be as terrible and destructive as we've been told but on the list of dangers to humanity in the short-run, it doesn't make the top five, IMO.  We'll be lucky not to turn the planet into a cinder or a block of ice because of plain old human nature in the coming decade.  

Anderegg, W. R., J. W. Prall, J. Harold and S. H. Schneider.  2010.  Expert credibility in climate change.  In:  Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, 107(27), 12107-12109.

These gentlemen did a preliminary review of the literature, including 1372 published papers.  They concluded that about 98% of those papers supported global warming/climate change.

What of the other 2%?  Plate tectonic theory was proposed by just one man.  Eventually, the geology profession accepted that he was right and now plate tectonic theory is a cornerstone of geologic science.  If even one of those opposing viewpoints can be substantiated, it could revolutionize climate science.  If somebody publishes an actual paper that says so, it will be double and triple checked because that is what scientists do.  If there's a mistake, they will attempt to expose it.

Mistakes do get past peer reviewers who are often not experts in the subjects they are reviewing - they check methods and analyses to see if the conclusions follow logically from the data, but some of the fine points are lost in the process.  The real peer reviews come after publication in full view of the public.  One does not want to be caught in a mistake in that forum.

SO:  which of those "equally qualified scientists" has actually published a paper laying out his opinions before his colleagues?

 

So what of the published papers that didn't support global warming?  One has to classify papers somehow and that is done by checking to see if they actually said that global warming was true.  But six papers published by known backers of global warming did not say that one way or the other and thus could not be counted as supporting global warming.  They just didn't say.  Most of the remainder just assumed warming and went on to clarify some issue in that context.  They didn't say they supported warming, but their paper would require warming to be true to make the rest of their work true.  But because they didn't say, that paper could not be counted as supporting warming.

So when these experimental design problems are eliminated, how many actually oppose the idea of warming?  None in that sample.  But there are still a few scientists out there with doubts.  They would be less than 1% of the scientific community.  Most of those are not climate specialists, but work in areas like pure statistics or mechanical engineering.  They are scientists but have not spent years-to-decades working on climate issues.

And then there are six-to-ten people who have found working for people like Anthony Watts and the Koch Brothers to be much more lucrative than climate science and have abandoned actual science.  But I note that even the Koch Brothers now admit that climate is changing.  It's just that they would lose billions if their coal mines were shut down, so they finance anti-warming propaganda.

 

Climate science itself is not very remunerative.  A Post Doc in climate science makes perhaps $50,000 a year for one to three years and then is unemployed while he searches for his next post-doc position.  By contrast, someone with a Bachelor's in computer science can make $70,000 a year at a permanent job straight out of college.  People study climate science because it's fascinating, not because they are going to get rich.  If they're lucky, they'll end up teaching in some college and do research on the side.  In my case, I'll retire before I ever reach that teaching post.

 

But a lot of money will be made in the conversion process:  the Plains and Eastern Clean Line is a multi-billion dollar project to bring wind power from Oklahoma to Florida.  By next year, Tallahassee will be powered by windmills in Oklahoma.  And that is only one of dozens of such lines going in.  Over a thousand windmills have been installed in the last ten years in northern Oklahoma with more in the southwest and more up in Kansas.  Garden City, Kansas has a windmill factory so busy it has to have TWO railroad sidings to carry their products to market.  Two weeks ago I drove up to Wichita.  Nine tower bases were installed in the six hours I was up there.  Each of those windmills pays a land rental of about $8000 a year.  Even Mr. Big Oil - T. Boone Pickens - owns a wind farm.

All that adds up to a lot of money.  It's all being done on credit in the expectation that profits will pay the bills.  So where will the profits come from?  There's a one-half cent per kwh price advantage for wind over gas-fired turbines.  There's a 3.5 cent per kwh advantage over oil and 6.5 cent advantage over coal.  That's where the profits will come from.

The guy who invented the fluorescent bulb is a millionaire.  Other people will invent other things and get rich selling them.  Clean energy is cheaper than both coal and oil.   Instead of spouting denialist bs, invent something to make the world better and get rich selling it.  Profits are a good thing.  We need them to make conversion work.

So, yes, there's money in conversion.  It's just not where you think it is.

Doug

[Doug1029]

3 hours ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

Scientific data should not be hidden. If somebody doesn't agree with the data they should present a case as to why it is wrong, not hide it.

Most grants require that the findings be published in a peer-reviewed journal.  I have worked on a "grant" for the Fish and Wildlife Service that didn't, but it was just for them and not for public consumption.  That's just as well because we didn't discover anything very earth-shaking (I did get three new chronologies out of it, though.).

We have proposals out to the Choctaws and the Corps of Engineers.  Those probably won't require publication, either, but the Corps of Engineers is one I would like to publish and will if they don't object.

In another case, the person who obtained the grant spent all the money collecting data and a set of sample cores.  He then took his data and the cores and went to another university, leaving the grant broke and the publication requirement unfulfilled.  Fearing a lawsuit requiring repayment of the money, the administration dumped the project in my lap because it is my set of research plots he used.  I am just starting the analysis.  I am being paid out of the ordinary operating budget, so I'm not expecting any raises.

Doug

[Doug1029]

16 hours ago, Harte said:

It seems to be going nowhere to me.

Harte

Historically, the shortest such investigation took eighteen months.  Mueller has been working on this one for what - two or three?  We have a long wait ahead.

Doug 

[Doug1029]

And Then:

"What is coming is a catastrophic global war that will probably begin regionally.  Nukes will probably be used on a very small scale and that will scare the hell out of everyone.  A peace will follow and when it is broken, all hell breaks loose."

 

It will take about 200 megatons to trigger a nuclear winter.  That could well be the worst climate disaster ever.

Doesn't matter who detonates them.  It's the total that counts.

Doug  

[Doug1029]

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Quite the contrary.  I have the actual raw data for the US.  The low-point, before warming, occurred in 1910.  There was pretty much a continuous rise in temps through 1952, with a slight "hiccup" in the early 1930s and a "bump" in 1937.  Temps leveled off through 1965, dipping slightly in the late 1960s.  They then trended slowly upward to 1976 when the next temperature excursion began.  They peaked in 1998 and trended slightly downward through 2005, then started to rise again.  There was a recent spike over the last two years that has now ended.  Temperatures are once again trending slowly upward.  Superimposed on all this are several cycles of hot and cold temps, one of which appears to be the Solar Cycle and another of which appears to be the Chandler Wobble.

Forgot to mention that this is consistent with tree ring data.

Doug

[AnchorSteam]

Well, since morality seems to still be a factor in this debate.... 

 

 

[lost_shaman]

14 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

All I had to read was the title:  Anthony Watts is a paid industry shill.  Much of what appears on his site is outright false.  It's purpose is to deny and mislead the public on the subject of global warming.  And you fell into the trap.

How about you post some scientific articles that come to that conclusion.  Watts' contributors are not data or climate professionals, but they are skilled at deception.

Why don't you address the issues rather than attack the messenger? I realize that's probably all you got, but it's still a logical fallacy and these issues are not going to just go away. These climate scientists and organizations can't keep from fiddling with the actual temperature readings to make the records look more like their computer models and thinking that no one will notice. People have noticed.

There is no trap, I've looked at all the angles to this objectively and I've come to find a position on the matter that is somewhat different from yours. So far you have not convinced me that my position should change. Your track record on this thread is POOR. That's being generous.

Here is someone other than Anthony Watts, just in case your Ad Hominem swayed any gullible minds.

https://climatecenter.fsu.edu/does-noaa-adjust-historical-climate-data 

Does NOAA "adjust" Historical Climate Data? - David Zierden

From the post.

 

That's not Anthony Watts, Doug. Let me quote.

Quote

 

These adjustment methods sound good in theory and are all defensible from peer-reviewed literature, but the problem lies in that it is all done automatically with programmed algorithms that detect, then adjust for these biases and break points. It is the ultimate "black box", where no one outside of NCDC would be able to reproduce their processing. That alone is one opening for the seeds of distrust.

What is also bothersome is that the early decades of the station temperature records are consistently adjusted downward (cooler), so that now the century-long temperature trend is higher in the adjusted records than in the raw data.

 

"Seeds of Distrust" it has a ring to it. 

[Essan]

The issue is simply that those who refuse to beleive that the Earth is getting warmer (or if it is, it's not due to human activity, or if it is due to human activity it's not due to burning fossil fuels ... )  think that meteorologists deliberately adjust data to prove said warming - because they must be, else why does the data show it's warming?

However, there is no benefit to meteorologists in fraudulently adjusting data.   There is benefit in adjusting data to take into account discovered errors, in order to create a more accurate record*.   Which would Mr Ockham's shaving instrument suggest is more likely to be happening?  


* noting especially that the most recent accusation was that BoM must be manipulating data because they were investigating why accepted (and widely reported at the time) temps were - allegedly - not showing on a temp record.   It must have been an American who made the allegation, they never did understand irony  

Edited August 4, 2017 by Essan

[Sir Smoke aLot]

Even tho he might be way off reality here i believe that mr. Hawking has a point in one aspect. Scientific community and people in general need to put more pressure to governments with the goal of making them more protective of health and environment rather that industry and billionaires. He did mention Trump, with respect to Paris agreement, but he didn't talk about Trump but about governments in general bmho.

 

Example. In my country there is one Gold mine for which Brittish company has bought right to mine. Still the mine isnt fully operating, merely in evaluation process ( as stated by our government and that company ) but truckloads of excavated ground and/or soil with gold fragments is being transported. By doing so local people have been very much ruined ( their roads being damaged and not repaired, water getting polluted... )...

 

I see a problem there, it's related to corruption by our government officials who turn blind for obvious violation of laws and that company which just points out that they have spent millions to get concession. My point is, while those local people have troubles, no one is solving them but as a mesure to resolve the issue they are presented by documents about how it is legal operation. Is it legal to destroy roads? Might me but law also requires that company which destroys them pays for repairs. Now it has been few years and no one did repair the road. Why? Becasue 'choosen few' will make a lot of profit from this and it seems that, with time, individual gain is prioritized rather than community. They will go out with profits, lawyers will make cases for them, if it comes to court it might take 10 years or more to resolve ( if it will ever be resolved ) and what has local community got from it?

Nothing. Apply this example to many other similar cases around the world. It ain't about countries anymore because private companies have more money than majority of countries in the world and it is easily concluded that with such power it's only profit which is important.

Third world countries feel this for long time now but it is comming to your own doorstep too my friends. Anti corruption can't fight such enormous amounts of money which is being pumped into corrupted few's pockets.

Sorry for long post, i might be very wrong but things are never as simple as we first think of them.

 

[Doug1029]

9 hours ago, lost_shaman said:

Why don't you address the issues rather than attack the messenger? I realize that's probably all you got, but it's still a logical fallacy and these issues are not going to just go away. These climate scientists and organizations can't keep from fiddling with the actual temperature readings to make the records look more like their computer models and thinking that no one will notice. People have noticed.

There is no trap, I've looked at all the angles to this objectively and I've come to find a position on the matter that is somewhat different from yours. So far you have not convinced me that my position should change. Your track record on this thread is POOR. That's being generous.

Here is someone other than Anthony Watts, just in case your Ad Hominem swayed any gullible minds.

https://climatecenter.fsu.edu/does-noaa-adjust-historical-climate-data 

Does NOAA "adjust" Historical Climate Data? - David Zierden

From the post.

So what's the problem?  These are well-founded objections.  I, too, prefer to work directly with the raw data, doing my own corrections.  And as the first one says, that way I know exactly what changes were made and why.  I do note, however, that these are editorials, not scientific papers.

One thing neither article says is whether the process they're discussing is iterative.  And I don't know.  Some data sets, when regressed iteratively, not only fail to converge, but end up with results way out in right field (See Taylor Theorem).  Normally the results are so absurd, the problem is easy to spot, but what if it is more subtle?  And what if that subtle problem exists in only a small number of subsets?  That could have a cumulative effect.

So now you have a plausible explanation.  Examine those algorithms and see if that is what is happening.  That ought to be worth a paper:  publish it.

 

I'm not surprised by the difference shown in the two graphs.  That is exactly what one would expect to see when new data is added in one localized part of the dataset.  We're really trying to compare apples and oranges here.  Makes a nice fruit salad.

Doug

Edited August 4, 2017 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

I work with both tree rings and weather records.  The weather data is used to calibrate the tree ring record.  The two have to agree.  I can calculate that a particular ring width in a particular chronology indicates a 1.36 PDSI (Palmer Drought Severity Index) value.  The statistics tell me how good the fit is.  If it isn't good enough, then either the tree ring data isn't useable, or there's a problem with the written record.  So I look for things like suppression in the tree rings and/or mistakes in the weather data.  A couple caveats here:  during the three years following an ice storm, the process under-estimates the PDSI value, indicating a drought that didn't happen.  Also, a real drought can mimic an ice storm signal, prompting "corrections" that overestimate the PDSI value and erase the drought.  So I look for the signal in multiple chronologies (Ice storms are severely localized and not likely to occur in multiple chronologies.).

And I may be the only one who has figured this out.  That's what happens when your field is so specialized that you're the only one working in it.  Worldwide, there are maybe six full-time researchers working on storms in tree ring data.

In a project I am currently working on and intending to publish, I used NOAA's averaged climate division data because it's convenient.  Averaging is the problem here.  Trees do not grow in average conditions; they grow in real ones.  Extreme low-temperatures reduce ring width for the following season.  But NOAA's averages never get that low.  So now I am transcribing 127 years of actual temperatures so I can determine how often these cold waves occur and how long they lasted.  A byproduct of this effort will be the frequency and severity of "blue northers" - cold waves not accompanied by severe weather.  We often get extreme cold waves (below-zero temps), accompanied by cloudless skies.  Interesting phenomenon.  Once this is done, I can produce a 350-year record of these storms and use that to determine if the intensity and frequency is changing.  And that bears directly on climate change.

One of my "someday" projects is the creation of Regionally Standardized Curves for all of Oklahoma's chronologies that are suitable.  These represent the growth of a co-dominant tree in a constant temperature regime.  Once these exist, one can compare the curve with the chronologies to determine if the temperatures are changing and how.  Then one can compare the change-record to the published climate record.  That serves as a double-check on the accuracy of records such as the one you're complaining about.  If too many people start finding problems, then NOAA will have to look at its processes.  So rather than whine about it, pick up an increment borer and go to work.  Be part of the solution.

 

There is a problem with NOAA's climate divisions that nobody, including your article's authors, seems to realize:  the divisions do not have equal weight.  There are varying numbers of stations and the divisions are for areas of different sizes.  If you are looking for the actual numbers, you need to correct for this.  NOAA doesn't.  I wonder what it would show if they did.

Doug

P.S.:  Here's a link to a wiki item about Anthony Watts:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts_(blogger)

Watts is a blogger.  His only qualifications in weather are that he has a bachelor's degree in meteorology and got an award from a now-defunct group of meteorologists.  He has not been certified by the Meteorological Society.  He has no qualifications at all in climatology.

His main contention is that climate change is caused by solar output, not CO2.  To support this contention he has published no scientific articles on the topic.  He routinely quotes scientific articles out-of-context and distorts the intended meaning of the words.

It is pretty easy to refute his solar-based contention:  simply run regressions using temps as the Y-variable and solar and CO2 levels as the X-variables.  A partial analysis of variance will tell you how important each is.  This has been done many times, but apparently, Mr. Watts can't read, either.

Doug

P.P.S.:  Even if he were right about solar-output being the important variable, he ignores the need to do something about it.  His assumption that "It's natural, so it's not our fault if the world gets too hot to sustain human life" would result in our extinction.  Whether or not humans have caused climate change, we'll be just as dead either way if we continue to ignore the problem.

Doug

Edited August 4, 2017 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

On ‎8‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 5:30 PM, Harte said:

It seems to be going nowhere to me.

Harte

It just went to a grand jury.

And that means that somebody in the Trmp Whitehouse is under criminal investigation.

It's not about national security and he-said/she-said any more.  Somebody could end up in jail over this.

Whether or not a sitting President can be prosecuted, an impeached one can be.  And all of his cabinet and staff and a few members of Congress are vulnerable no matter who is President.  Trmp said he'd drain the swamp.  Looks like he prompted Muehler to do just that.  At least, it's one promise he can say he kept.

Doug

Edited August 4, 2017 by Doug1029

[Harte]

7 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

It just went to a grand jury.

And that means that somebody in the Trmp Whitehouse is under criminal investigation.

It's not about national security and he-said/she-said any more.  Somebody could end up in jail over this.

Whether or not a sitting President can be prosecuted, an impeached one can be.  And all of his cabinet and staff and a few members of Congress are vulnerable no matter who is President.  Trmp said he'd drain the swamp.  Looks like he prompted Muehler to do just that.  At least, it's one promise he can say he kept.

Doug

A grand jury is not an indication that any one individual is under criminal investigation. No special counsel (or special prosecutor) has ever not convened a grand jury.

Harte

Edited August 4, 2017 by Harte