An interesting side note is that they recently started transcribing captain Cooksship logs.
Do we have any information on the calibration techniques used at the time? While the information is useful I would hesitate to include it in a scientific study.
Obviously it has more anecdotal value than anything else. I just found it interesting.
I have sat through a fairly detailed technical explanation of the status, methods and results of recent climate analysis. The talk was aimed at a scientifically proficient audience and still it took about an hour to go through the bare essentials necessary for arriving at the oft quoted conclusions of 1) There is no doubt that it is happening, and 2) there is no doubt that we humans are doing it.
The problem is that that's where the problems begin. Science can only lead society to water, not make it drink. The fact is that key phrases like 1) & 2) I mentioned are easily attacked, and the general anti-science attitude coupled with a short attention span makes attempts to have a detailed discussion about the facts an exercise in futility.
I predicted that we would start to unravel global warming. Looks like there are some interesting projects out there. The BBC has mentioned a couple of them.
Regarding the link The Tick posted: I am not convinced, the author for one is employed by the Cato institute (wikipedia) which is an old school conservative (highly different form the current trend) think tank, so you might expect a tendency to be against big government and by proxy highly skeptical of climate change research. This is the first time I have heard of "the climate data" going missing and I highly doubt the story.
Also it should be noted that the evidence for global climate change does in no way hinge upon weather station data collected over the past 30 something years. The extended record of earths surface temperature spans many thousands of years and is mainly reconstructed from deep ice cores in Antarctica and tree growth rings. The lecture I was referring to earlier went into the details of how reliable and accurate these are in reality. Additionally climate research has to take into account external factors, the most important being the sun. Here, tree rings, radio carbon dating and various old astronomical records help chart the fluctuations of sunspots, which are again linked to the general solar activity.
Like I said earlier, going through all the experimental and theoretical uncertainties takes a while even if you are a scientist (or rather especially if you are), but the end result is that if you plot the sunspot activity vs the global mean surface temperature over the past several thousand years you end up with the sunspots being an excellent predictor of the temperature for most of the time. The graphs only start to diverge after the industrial revolution and currently the temperature is ascending way way past all the error bars for the effect to be a statistical fluctuation.
This guy is going around the country (and uses volunteers) to check the NOAA weather stations to see how reliable they are. He shows that 69% of them have an error of greater than 2°C (3.6°F). Much of this is due to increased urbanization around the sensors, many of which have been in the same place for over 100 years. Things like asphalt, air conditioner vents and buildings affect the temperature readings, almost always making the thermometers read higher.
There's also a preliminary study on the site showing that the change in the station paint specification from whitewash to latex may lead to errors of up to 2°F.
As the NOAA data is often used to support global warming claims, it's important to note that the data may be flawed.
As the NOAA data is often used to support global warming claims, it's important to note that the data may be flawed.
As I noted above, this is done only because it is the easiest way to show the unwashed masses some evidence. Usually sunspot activity is completely omitted because it is "hard" to explain (more sunspots == a "darker" sun means higher temps on earth). In a public discourse at such a low level, how could you expect any of the real evidence from dendrochronology or ice core samples to surface? People spending their time to "disprove" the NOOA data are, in effect, going after a red herring.
Now I'm not an ecomentalist, but did you actually read that article?
Here are the first two paragraphs:
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
Was the data ever public? If not, people need to set their politics aside and ask themselves how trustworthy a study is if the underlying data is kept confidential.
Did other studies disagree with this study? If not, and those studies publicized the data, it would suggest that this study was accurate.
Comments
I have sat through a fairly detailed technical explanation of the status, methods and results of recent climate analysis. The talk was aimed at a scientifically proficient audience and still it took about an hour to go through the bare essentials necessary for arriving at the oft quoted conclusions of 1) There is no doubt that it is happening, and 2) there is no doubt that we humans are doing it.
The problem is that that's where the problems begin. Science can only lead society to water, not make it drink. The fact is that key phrases like 1) & 2) I mentioned are easily attacked, and the general anti-science attitude coupled with a short attention span makes attempts to have a detailed discussion about the facts an exercise in futility.
Also it should be noted that the evidence for global climate change does in no way hinge upon weather station data collected over the past 30 something years. The extended record of earths surface temperature spans many thousands of years and is mainly reconstructed from deep ice cores in Antarctica and tree growth rings. The lecture I was referring to earlier went into the details of how reliable and accurate these are in reality. Additionally climate research has to take into account external factors, the most important being the sun. Here, tree rings, radio carbon dating and various old astronomical records help chart the fluctuations of sunspots, which are again linked to the general solar activity.
Like I said earlier, going through all the experimental and theoretical uncertainties takes a while even if you are a scientist (or rather especially if you are), but the end result is that if you plot the sunspot activity vs the global mean surface temperature over the past several thousand years you end up with the sunspots being an excellent predictor of the temperature for most of the time. The graphs only start to diverge after the industrial revolution and currently the temperature is ascending way way past all the error bars for the effect to be a statistical fluctuation.
This guy is going around the country (and uses volunteers) to check the NOAA weather stations to see how reliable they are. He shows that 69% of them have an error of greater than 2°C (3.6°F). Much of this is due to increased urbanization around the sensors, many of which have been in the same place for over 100 years. Things like asphalt, air conditioner vents and buildings affect the temperature readings, almost always making the thermometers read higher.
There's also a preliminary study on the site showing that the change in the station paint specification from whitewash to latex may lead to errors of up to 2°F.
As the NOAA data is often used to support global warming claims, it's important to note that the data may be flawed.
Sea life is terrifying.
Did other studies disagree with this study? If not, and those studies publicized the data, it would suggest that this study was accurate.