Monday, September 03, 2007

Cool station of today . . .

Alma MI, with the Stevenson Screen right next to a large bush and a tree to the south to provide shade


The report describes this as an urban back yard shaded in the morning and late afternoon. Wanna bet that is an Urban Cooling Effect.

As Eli said for every air conditioner there is a tree, for every piece of blacktop a bush.

36 comments:

Anonymous said...

For someone who has said a photo has no value, you sure seem to see a lot of worth in them now Eli. Why the change of heart?

="As Eli said for every air conditioner there is a tree, for every piece of blacktop a bush."=

And a chicken in every pot?

Question is, why we should accept any data from these contaminated sites?

Regards,
Paul S

Sparrow (in the coal mine) said...

Eli,

I'm still adding content to the following page but this is a far far better way of dealing with the assault on the surface record:

Heat Island Argument Destroyed - Logicalscience

It includes graphs and pics that should make it easy for a 12 year old to know the surface station readings are legit.

Anonymous said...

Clearly, his point is that not all sites have a warming bias, a fact that is seldom emphasized by the people who like to take these pictures. That is an important omission if the goal is to imply that a significant portion of even the corrected temperature record shows a warming bias.

Anonymous said...


Question is, why we should accept any data from these contaminated sites?


No reason to at all, since we can rely on satellite data that show the same warming trend that the surface data do.

Locri Epizephryii said...

I think the important part of this all is not whether there is a cooling trend or heating trend, but that the data being gathered at sites like this has potential issues that might mess up statistical inferences.

P.S. You should also site your references, this picture is originally from SurfaceStations.org

^_^

Anonymous said...

It is only fair to provide a citation for your source, unless the irony was too much to acknowledge. As for the "we are only interested in UHI and warming influences," that is hardly fair to surfacestations explicit effort to a 100% sampling.

Anonymous said...

Eli said: "for every air conditioner there is a tree, for every piece of blacktop a bush..."

...and for every Bush, a war in Iraq.

EliRabett said...

Click on the picture. It takes you to surfacestations.

Rob Dawg said...

Anonymous science. Eli, where's your white hood? Now, now, don't get upset. If you were a real person you'd have reason to be upset over such an inflammatory comment. Since you choose to remain anon you have no standing to feel personally insulted. That's the downside and exactly why science is not anonymous. Tell us who you are and I promise to not make such comments in the future. Don't however, expect a retraction for calling someone who hides and throws stones in an attempt to destroy community a white sheet coward.

Anonymous said...

A bush may also attenuate a cooling wind in the area of the screen, leading to warming. It would be interesting to see a study with these different microclimate effects quantified and balanced against each other.
-nanny_govt_sucks

EliRabett said...

Wind blowing over leaves cools as the leaves transpire. Reboot.

Anonymous said...

"As Eli said for every air conditioner there is a tree, for every piece of blacktop a bush." In other words the data in question is being sloppily gathered and is in no way reliable. Pathetic.

Anonymous said...

nanny_govt_sucks

"It would be interesting to see a study with these different microclimate effects quantified and balanced against each other."

Yes, it would be interesting to see an actual scientific study done every once in a while by "skeptics". Is that really asking for too much?

Instead all we get is hot air blown over every conversation which heats, causing people to expire.

Boot (please).

Anonymous said...

Looks like Surfacestations.org is onto the bunny. WHY DON"T THEY SHARE THEIR DATA!!!!!!!!! WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!THEY ARE HIDING A CONSPIRACY!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY CAN'T WE AUDIT THE COOL STATION PICTURES!!!! OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!

O M G!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Just make the link go to the surfacestations page of that station, not directly to the picture, then it'd be fair.
-flavius collium

Anonymous said...

This says they're on reduced bandwidth right now, but seems out of date:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/

Anonymous said...

Okay, now that I have calmed down I can tell a story. I wanted to know if Anthony Watts shared his views on Neptune at the NCAR (is that right?) talk he gave. But when I asked at CA, they removed my post. THE CONSPIRACY DEEPENS!!!!!MY SNARKY COMMENT ON ANTHONY WATTS' PRETEND SCIENTIFIC BLOG POST WAS EIGHTY-SIXED!!!!!

My hunch is that Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre are building a weather machine out of industrial air conditioners, asphalt and the foreheads of feverish youngsters. They are using this machine to melt the arctic so that they can find oil and then drown polar bears in the oil and hide their role in Teapot Dome.

Marion Delgado said...

Paul S:

Our "we" can do science and understands statistics. When you join that "we" your question will answer itself.

Anonymous said...

Question is, why we should accept any data from these contaminated sites?'

And why should we accept any data from this contaminated site?

Anonymous said...

= marion delgado said: =
="Our "we" can do science and understands statistics."=

But you can't follow your own professional standards for surface sites and show no interest in cleaning up the mess.

"Do science" attempting to measure a warming signal measured in the hundredths of a degree annually from crap surface sites like these?

Sure.

Regards,
Paul S

Anonymous said...

Notice the cute new pejorative they use - contaminated. Ooooh, such a baaad thing, it's contaminated throw it out!! Of course, their little happysnaps have yet to prove any such thing, but that doesn't stop them from declaring a holocaust on the order of Chernobyl. Besides being scientifically incompetent, they're also as mendacious as a Madison Avenue adman.

One thing that bugs me about all this photography is that how do we know they've been using the same focal length lens for their pictures in each case? Telephoto compression can make things far away from each other seem much closer, and the opposite is also possible, so unless all pictures are taken with the same focal length lens, we can never know (without visiting) how much of what is pictured is reality. Not that it matters a whit as far as the stations go, but they do like to claim everything from incompetence in siting to outright fraud. They should at least provide information about each shot, so we can know that they're on the up-and-up.

Then at least we'll know they're honestly foolish.

Anonymous said...

== anony said: ==
="One thing that bugs me about all this photography is that how do we know they've been using the same focal length lens for their pictures in each case?"=

Uh, they aren't, nor does it matter.

Visit www.surfacestations.org as the majority, if not all, of the photos are digital pix, with the EXIF data posted for each photo.

="Telephoto compression can make things far away from each other seem much closer, and the opposite is also possible.=

You can pull that trick off with one photo but with numerous photos from different angles of the same surface site it is nearly impossible.

Next you will be complaining that some of the photos are overexposed.

Regards,
Paul S

Anonymous said...

Paul said "Visit www.surfacestations.org as the majority, if not all, of the photos are digital pix"

..and we all know that no tricks can be played with those, don't we?


"Next you will be complaining that some of the photos are overexposed."

Isn't essentially what all of these complaints from Watts et al boil down to? -- Overexposure -- ie that the temperature sensors are a "little overexposed"

Anonymous said...

As long as digital photo manipulation can happen (and rather easily at that!), there's no reason to trust any EXIF information. Besides, I didn't see information on some of the photos. Better to get a rigorous standard for taking photos first, guys. It'll make you seem, how do you say, scientific? If I were not so busy, I'd continue with this, but for now, ta.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure you're busy anony, busy visiting conspiracy sites. Now you are promoting the photo manipulation conspiracy.

You advocate "rigorous standards" for taking photos of sites. Hmmm. Too bad climate experts havent' bothered to follow their own rigorous standards in many instances.

Regards,
Paul S

Dano said...

Too bad climate experts havent' bothered to follow their own rigorous standards in many instances.

Why? Is it affecting the record? To what quantifiable degree? Do share numbers. And share which amateur group is collecting data to quantify.

There's none? Huh.

Best,

D

Anonymous said...

Paul S said: "Now you are promoting the photo manipulation conspiracy.'

You are the one who brought up the issue of digital photos to argue that there was no perspective distortion due to lensing affects (something that applies to digital cameras just like film cameras, by the way).

But digital imaging is uniquely suited to manipulation of all types. The imagination's the limit. That's not conspiracy, that's a fact.

How do I know that those images have not been manipulated?

Watts et al made it pretty clear at the beginning of this project where their biases lie, so it behooves them to have some sort of quality control in place to ensure that there is no funny business going on.

you are rioght about one thing though. I don't trust them.

Anonymous said...

= anony said: =
="You are the one who brought up the issue of digital photos to argue that there was no perspective distortion due to lensing affects (something that applies to digital cameras just like film cameras, by the way)."=

I said no such thing. I said that multiple photos of the same sensor made the possibility of perspective compression that much more difficult.

Do try to read my posts before posting your nonsensical blather.

Regards,
Paul S

Anonymous said...

= dano said: =
=="Why? Is it affecting the record? To what quantifiable degree? Do share numbers. And share which amateur group is collecting data to quantify.

There's none? Huh."==

You still have it backwards dano. The peer-reviewed scientific literature stresses the importance of eliminating micro-site contamination.

That climatologists have ignored their own professional standards at numerous sites places the onus on them to quantify the data from their contaminated sites.

That climatologists can not quantify these contaminants, nor even seem to be aware of such contaminants, discounts the robustness of their data.

Regards,
Paul S

Anonymous said...

If anyone is guilty of nonsensical blather here, Paul S, it is you.

Most of your posts meet go well below that standard.

EliRabett said...

Actually the literature seeks to identify any trends due to microsite issues and to deal with them by homogeneity adjustments and comparisons between neighboring sites.

Anonymous said...

No, the literature on surface sites specifies what the requirements are for surface sites; requirements which are routinely ignored.

Homogeneity adjustments can not claim to correct for surface site contaminations when it is unknown by the experts whether microsite contamination, whether it be of a warming or cooling kind, is affecting neighboring sites.

It is important to remember we are trying to detect a warming signal in the 1/100ths of a degree annually here.

Regards,
Paul S

Anonymous said...

^ shoud read "a warming signal of several hundredths of a degree annually."

Paul S

Anonymous said...

paul, can you site a reference in the climate science literature for the term "contamination" that you have now used several times?

Or is that a use of the word that you and/or Anthony Watts simply made up?

Term definition is important in science (in fact, some would say critical) and using a term that has not been properly defined (at least not in the context in question) is not particularly meaningful.

You may like the sound of the word, "contaminated", but where is it defined for this case and what proof do you have that the sites in question are "contaminated"? (whatever that means)

Anonymous said...

No no anony, the word contamination has not been "made up"; you're simply being paranoid. Lighten up.

Peterson, in his 2003 article:

"Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous
United States"


used the word "contamination", in relation to urban warming, eight times.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wmo/ccl/rural-urban.pdf

Real Climate, starting several years before anyone had heard of Anthony Watts, was referring to biases and inhomogeneities as "contamination" also.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=43

If the word "contamination" is good enough for Peterson, it should be good enough for you also.

Regards,
Paul S

Dano said...

Well, the denialist community appears to be getting closer to have the rhetoric down for their new campaign. The reality-based community, however, needs no new rhetoric or campaign, as it continues to be: excuse me, denialists - where's your evidence, studies, hypotheses, models, conversations, journal articles, scribbles on a napkin? Nowhere? OK. Buh-bye. Buh-bye now.

Best,

D