Friday, November 17, 2006

An old dog learns the new dog's trick......

There is a hilarious interchange on Roger Peilke Sr.'s blog which starts with RPSr stuffing his shirt and harumphing

One interesting comment by Dr. Karoly in the second news clip is that he said in the interview that the heat island effect is a “much much smaller effect than the observed warming we have seen over the last hundred years”. Since the urban heat island effect typically results in several degrees Celsius of higher temperature than surrounding rural areas, while the global average surface temperature increase over the last hundred years is in the fraction of degrees Celsius, he is incorrect in his claim.
Georg Hoffman demurrs somewhat academically:
Your statement on Karoly can be found on many sceptics site in different forms. I am sure you could do a bit better. Karoly obviously talks about the impact UHI has or might have on corrected global networks. So “the several degrees” has absolutely nothing to do with it.
RP Sr. plays the wounded purist defending truth, justice and the scientific way
Georg - My reply is for you listen to the statement on the video interview by Dr. Karoly. If he meant the role of the UHI on the global averaged trends, he certainly did not say that. What the listeners heard was an incorrect report on this aspect of climate science.
Then they go back and forth a few times, with Hoffman pointing out that
Roger you give me 10 hours of tapes of you speaking about climate, dear hunting and car maintenance and I make you in 30 seconds summary appear as a complete moron. I insist it’s absolutely clear from the Karoly interview that he is speaking about UHI impact in global warming detection. I insist your presentation of the statements of Dr Karoly is dishonest and it’s not up to Dr Karoly to clarify his statement but to you to correct your website.
Roger and the choir do not take this well, when who should appear but David Karoly:
Thank you for the invitation to correct the information in your blog. In the second news clip, when I said in the interview that the heat island effect is a “much smaller effect than the observed warming we have seen over the last hundred years”, I was indeed referring to the global average temperature variations. That would have been obvious if the previous sentence from my interview had been broadcast. The editing for the broadcast omitted that sentence.
But we all know that a Pielke cannot do an Emily Litella so this amusing exchange closes with Roger standing on his high horse (it is now the fault of the media, not his) and suggesting that Karoly:

see:

Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, J. Angel, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, J. Steinweg-Woods, R. Boyles , S. Fall, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2006: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Research, submitted.
http://blue.atmos.colostate.edu/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf

I hope the paper listed above encourages you to explore the set of issues that we raise.

where Clarissa explains it all.

Suitable responses are solicited. They must be publishable on a family blog.

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