Comments on: What is the Temperature?

By: John Goetz

John Goetz — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:26:43 +0000

Scientist and TCO,

The problem I have described in my post is not about "improving the record." The actual past record never changed. An artifact of the algorithm selected by GISS to calculate global average temperature is that it will perturb past results. It would be not unlike seeing Tiger Wood's capture the #1 world ranking for 2008 in golf and having that drop his 2000 ranking from first to second.

By: Tony Edwards

Tony Edwards — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:41:17 +0000

Scientist and TCO, it's not a matter of "improving" data, or even something put forward by a side, simply that, once a recording is made, be it of temperature, air pressure, wind speed or whatever, that is the recorded figure. If adjustments have to be made initially, then so be it. But once that has been done, that's it! Going back several years using some algorithm or other and changing the past should not happen.
I worked, many years ago, on Concorde wind tunnel tests and if we had a reading of something that looked anomalous, we didn't estimate what it should be, we did the test again. And once done, that was it. How well do you think it would have flown if we had estimated values from subsequent measurements?

By: TCO

TCO — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:56:14 +0000

Could you try to ONCE think critically about something that our side puts forward? Sheesh. you really make me sick with your dedication to the day one hypothesis.

By: Adirian

Adirian — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:36:58 +0000

Scientist – because you can’t “improve” a faulty record with an algorithm. Basic principle of information: Garbage in, garbage out. At best the data is unchanged, and at worst, its accuracy is damaged. No algorithm can fill in missing holes or weed out bad data, operating only ON that data.

The reason for this is that all the information that is available, when operating on a record, is already in the record. The information is already captured. Any operation on that information generates a subset of the information contained within it, because you can’t generate a superset from a subset. (Actually, you can, but the odds against it are phenomenal, and you’d have no way to verify that it is the “correct” superset. From an informational perspective, then, it’s functionally impossible.)

The correct approach to take would be to generate new information to operate on the old information with – say, comparing ice core samples with historical temperature records – which is not the case here. (As the GISS is just filling in holes by interpolation, and thus increasing statistical noise.) (And that particular example wouldn’t work, because ice core samples suffer from osmotic contamination.)

By: Scientist

Scientist — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:31:55 +0000

Deniers spend a lot of time bleating on about how the surface record is full of errors. Now you appear to be suggesting that improving the temperature record is somehow dodgy. So, would you prefer that the record is left static and never improved, or that analysis is updated and improved whenever possible?

By: Mister Jones

Mister Jones — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:33:37 +0000

FYI; Just seen the latest on the sunspot cycles. Doesn't matter what all the AGW crowd say, or how they massage their figures. I think the lowered solar output is about to trump their presumed 'ace'.

Prediction; 2008 & 2009 are going to be much colder than average.