Temperature Measurement

Signal to Noise

91 Comments

The Hockey Schtick points to a study on Pennsylvania temperatures that illustrates a point I have been making for a while:

A new SPPI paper examines the raw and adjusted historical temperature records for Pennsylvania and finds the mean temperature trend from 1895 to 2009 to be minus .08°C/century, but after unexplained adjustments the official trend becomes positive .7°C/century. The difference between the raw and adjusted data exceeds the .6°C/century in global warming claimed for the 20th century.

I think people are too quick to jump onto the conspiracy bandwagon and paint these adjustments as scientists forcing the outcome they want.  In fact, as I have written before, some of these adjustments (such as adjustments for changes in time of observation) are essential.  Some, such as how the urbanization adjustments are done (or not done) are deeply flawed.  But the essential point is that the signal to noise ratio here is really really low.  The signal we are trying to measure (0.6C or so of warming) is smaller than the noise, even ignoring measurement and other errors.

91 thoughts on “Signal to Noise”

  1. This one example doesn’t prove a conspiracy. It’s just that, as Lindzen observes, all the adjustments seem to be toward warming. …

  2. I agree, you don’t have to impute malice to those making adjustments to the “raw” data. There are some + and some – from equipment changes station movement etc. A low pass filter algorithm should eliminate these since the changes seem to be abrupt.

    The harder ones to eliminate are slow changes in UHI which seem to be greater for smaller towns. [In relative terms, not absolute.]

    So a cow pasture like Dallas Ft Worth airport in 1977 shows huge warming as a medium sized town and a busy airport is built around it.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

    A small Naval Air station 20 Km away shows no such warming since population density didn’t change much during the same years. They stopped taking data in 1996 which is a shame.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590010&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

    The trend and amount seems to be the same for adjusted and unadjusted data which proves the UHI was not corrected for properly.

    These links are a great NASA resource to study temperature measurements and adjustments.

    Plug in your local stations I would love to hear what others find out.

    You must start at:

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

  3. Here is a link you can use to see how your local weather station is or isn’t adjusted.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

    I used it for the Dallas Ft Worth area. The airport was the site of a cow-pasture in 1977 and a small 30,000 person town was built around it.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590000&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1

    A small Navel Air station 18 Km away showed no such warming because it started semi urban and ended semi urban.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590010&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1

    The trend and amount appears not to be changed by the “adjusted” data set.

    Please plug your local weather station in and post your results.

  4. Grow up, you pathetic piece of shit. Pennsylvania is not the whole planet. Raw data is useless – calibrations are essential. They are all well documented. The errors on estimates of global mean temperature anomalies are far smaller than the changes observed. It looks like you know this, even if you are not able to consciously understand that you do – otherwise, how could you be so sure of the 0.6°C figure that you quote?

  5. commieBob:
    This one example doesn’t prove a conspiracy. It’s just that, as Lindzen observes, all the adjustments seem to be toward warming. …

    This would make a nice challenge.
    Can the fake hunter supply us with an instance or two of an error adjustment that bends the temperature record down? Regional or global – I’m not picky.

  6. Measuring temperature isn’t simple.

    There are many reasons that thermometer readings must be adjusted. Equipment changes or moves will cause changes which will be abrupt and can be detected in the metadata or eliminated with a low pass filter algorithm.

    UHI on the other hand looks like actual temperature change which is what we want to study so it is devilishly difficult to remove.

    Here is a link you can use to see how your local weather station is or isn’t adjusted.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

    I used it for the Dallas Ft Worth area. The airport was the site of a cow-pasture in 1977 and a small 30,000 person town was built around it.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590000&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1

    A small Navel Air station 18 Km away showed no such warming because it started semi urban and ended semi urban.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590010&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1

    The trend and amount appears not to be changed by the “adjusted” data set.

    Please plug your local weather station in and post your results.

  7. Selling a global climate apocalypse based on 0.Xo per century is one of the greatest marketing achievements of all time.
    The fact that forcing the data to get the desired results- that the actual data suggests an even more trivial change, as you point out in the Pa. data- is one that is incomprehensible to those suffering from true believer syndrome.
    But while people fall into popular manias in great crowds, they recover as individuals. The tide is turning, and all but the most committed true believers are waking up to the AGW scam and rejecting its extremism and distortions of the truth.

  8. Remember measuring temperature isn’t simple. Getting it wrong doesn’t imply malice.

    There are many reasons that thermometer readings must be adjusted. Equipment changes or moves will cause changes which will be abrupt and can be detected in the metadata or eliminated with a low pass filter algorithm.

    UHI on the other hand looks like actual temperature change which is what we want to study so it is devilishly difficult to remove.

    Here is a link you can use to see how your local weather station is or isn’t adjusted.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

    I used it for the Dallas Ft Worth area. The airport was the site of a cow-pasture in 1977 and a small 30,000 person town was built around it.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590000&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1

    A small Navel Air station 18 Km away showed no such warming because it started semi urban and ended semi urban.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590010&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1

    The trend and amount appears not to be changed by the “adjusted” data set.

    Please plug your local weather station in and post your results.

  9. The 0.6Deg/century is in line with the natural recovery of temperature,following the last mini ice-age.
    Do you really need to call people Little S—,when there are so many BIG S— in POLITICS.
    The MARXISTS want their/your TAXES.

  11. Adjusting raw temperature data is difficult at best. Urban Heat Island effect mimics slow warming which is the phenomenon we want to study. Even with the best intention adjusting for UHI takes manual value based judgments, which are difficult to quantify.

    Here is a link you can use to see how your local weather station is or isn’t adjusted.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

    I used it for the Dallas Ft Worth area. The airport was the site of a cow-pasture in 1977 and a small 30,000 person town was built around it.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590000&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1

    A small Navel Air station 18 Km away showed no such warming because it started semi urban and ended semi urban.

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425722590010&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1

    The trend and amount appears not to be changed by the “adjusted” data set.

  13. The signal to noise ration gets even more ridiculous when you consider that it seems a significant number of the measuring stations have expected error higher than the signal being sought after due to siting issues.

  14. Ahhh… the issue that initially turned me away from AGW theory. I was working on a personal geeky project involving some reasonably precise temperature measurement (tenths of a degree centigrade), and was curious as to how the “experts” were doing it with their multi-million-dollar research budgets. My initial response was “You’re. [Freaking]. Kidding. Me.”

  15. “calibrations are essential”: some are. “They are all well documented”: what rubbish – even Phil Jones says the opposite.

  16. The latest AGW effort in bogosity is to now claim that the paint, or lack of paint, on temperature stations produces a downward bias.
    I submit that any apoclaypse that can be hidden in the noise from the quality of paint on a temperature station is not much of an apocalypse.

  17. “The 0.6Deg/century is in line with the natural recovery of temperature,following the last mini ice-age.”

    Ah yes, one of the favourites of the fuckwitted. Temperatures don’t “recover”, ever. The word is utterly meaningless in this context. You don’t have the first clue about physics, let alone climate physics. Don’t comment again if you are so completely ignorant.

  18. One of the great tells of the mentally challenged pseudo-scientist is their inability to communicate with civility, much less with clarity or factual.
    That 0.6o per century is well within historical norms is unacceptable to those impaired with true believer syndrome. Just today one of the Obamaton AGW promoters today made some specious claim about an irreversible climate apocalypse being underway even now. But then she went on to describe how by way of following AGW demands the apocalypse can indeed be reversed. The true believer community does not see the inherent impossibility and delusional aspect of claims like that assertion. When confronted with clear and reasonable observations, that show how infantile AGW claims are, such as one about temperature increases being well within historical norms, the true believer reacts as the truly limited always do, with anger and empty words.

  19. Don’t you just love some of these posts by (apparent) catastrophic AGW believers? Narcissistic rage can be so amusing.

  20. Among all the “fuckwitted” and “Narcissistic rage” comments, has anyone been doing this?

    “Plug in your local stations I would love to hear what others find out.

    “You must start at:

    “http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/”

    I have been (Wisconsin, Texas, Oregon). Netdr, while there are certainly anomalies, I find a consistent trend upwards in virtually all stations, urban and rural. Did you cherry-pick the graphs you posted above?

  21. A bit belated, and off topic. I don’t know how many have read ‘Manufacturing Consent’. Its particularly relevant today with respect to the original topic (media), however, as a more general thesis I figure it applies aptly to ‘climate science’ and the AGW hysteria. You don’t need a conspiracy to have a similar outcome of a conspiracy.

  22. ****”You don’t need a conspiracy to have a similar outcome of a conspiracy.”

    Are you referring to baseless fears and accusations leveled at scientists who are simply doing their jobs?

  23. Scientists doing their jobs now includes calling for criminalization of dissent, rude behavior and support of terrorism, along with suppressing peer review, intimidating editors and lying?
    How charming.

  24. “Are you referring to baseless fears and accusations leveled at scientists who are simply doing their jobs?”
    – Waldang

    Nah. It’s a well know fact that money only corrupts skeptics of AGW theory. Proponents can literally swim in grant money and never take anything into account other than maintaining the highest standards of honesty and integrity, and would never do things like hide or conveniently ‘lose’ data, or call for their critics to be arrested, or anything like that.

  25. In this era of publish or perish, history shows you get the science you pay for and there is a huge amount of funding for ‘climate change’ related research. I have been told by a surprising number of teaching scientists and academics that there is a lot of grant money available if you can find *any* relationship to global warming in the proposal. Just like in the old days (or maybe even still) when cancer research was being hugely funded, you could crank out all kinds of papers on carcinogens, now you can find a climate angle on pretty much anything ranging from architecture to solar power to plants and on and on and on.

    Waldang (Waldo’s alias) If you had ever read read Manufacturing Consent, you’d know that even sincere, concerned journalists can find themselves griding out stuff which is not true, or shall we say, not fully informed.

    Similarly, if you knew anything about science, you’d know the overwhelming proportion of ‘peer reviewed’ science is subsequently shown to be wrong, and a goodly portion of it is insignificant and/or irrelevent. However, an academic is usually evaluated on the basis of the number of published peer reviewed papers and assocaited citations these days, not on the basis of whether those papers are any good. Hence the concept of LPUs (Least Publishable Units, where a minor are largely insignificant paper is broken into a half dozen or so even less significant papers, in order to raise the count, etc..). So, in the long ago era of quality science, a good researcher would put out 6 high quality, important papers in a lifetime, now they couldn’t get a professorship of that measily volume. Of course there are still great scientists, but they are pretty thin on the ground.

    Not that that in any way speaks for the quality of peer review, or the nobel intent of all scientists.

  26. “Similarly, if you knew anything about science, you’d know the overwhelming proportion of ‘peer reviewed’ science is subsequently shown to be wrong, and a goodly portion of it is insignificant and/or irrelevent.”
    Mingy

    And as a perfect example of this, witness the sheer number of published, peer reviewed papers on the US NIH site which fail to link weight gain and loss to calorie surplus and deficit respectively because of poor experimental models. Also witness, the remarkable number of studies cited by ‘diet gurus’ who claim to have implicitly violated the laws of physics by letting people eat as much as they want and not gain weight so long as they avoid this or that particular macronutrient or class of food. It is truly amazing how little The Science Is Settled Crowd actually knows about science.

  27. Richard A.

    Hey – as a fat guy I try to read as little as I can about the science of weight gain. However, I figure my weight problem is a result of an over active appetite and insufficient exercise. I’m gonna risk being embarrassed but, are you taking a shot at my comment, or is it true what you are writing about the NIH, etc.?

    I guess I overstate – there are numerically a lot of good papers, but there is a real whole lot of noise. Hence the frequent cancer breakthroughs we read about in the newspapers, etc.. A good friend is somewhat of a biotech guru (NO I’M NOT GOING TO GIVE HIS NAME!) and every once in a while I’ll read a recent article and pass it on, and discover something along the lines that this particular approach has been tried and he tells me it never works in vivo because … And then there is stuff I know about which is straight up hockum.

    So, science is like a lot of things. Often you don’t want to know whats beind the curtain.

  30. ****“It’s a well know fact that money only corrupts skeptics of AGW theory.”

    Hmmm…never heard that one. Personally I doubt that money corrupts skeptics. Rather, I think political ideology, conservative backlash, and that strange propensity of the human being to become paranoid and provoked once a conspiracy theory is voiced corrupt clear thinking. And this is what corrupts skeptics.

    ****“Proponents can literally swim in grant money.”

    Yeah, I’m sure they are just living to rock star lifestyle. How much money are Mann and Jones making, anyway? Does anyone know?

    ****“and never take anything into account other than maintaining the highest standards of honesty and integrity,”

    Proof otherwise? I’m sure that somewhere, sometime, some scientist has fudged data. As I am sure somewhere, sometime some doctor has performed a more expensive surgery than was necessary. Or some politician has signed a law that benefited only a few choice lobbying interests. Or some mechanic has done an unnecessary repair. So I guess we must condemn all doctors and politicians and mechanics too?

    Then again, I’ve seen no convincing evidence that the scientists of AGW have anything but high professional standards. The best denialist evidence is generally something like the CRU emails – which are completely unconvincing. These scientists are simply doing their job; you here simply don’t like what you are hearing.

    ****“and would never do things like hide or conveniently ‘lose’ data,”

    Even if Mann did destroy data (a charge he has been officially cleared of, by the way) there are copious amounts of data from numerous entities for anyone with an internet connection. Look at the links above that netdr so nicely provided. Not only is there plenty’o’data for everyone, but there are multiple codes available. This is only one example from the multiple entities which make models and data on climate change available to anyone.

    The only way that denialists can claim that anyone “hides” data is to conveniently ignore these free, easily accessible resources. The argument is ridiculous if one stands outside Denierland.

    ****“or call for their critics to be arrested, or anything like that.”

    Hansen did say that certain big energy executives should stand trial for “crimes against humanity” for disseminating what he considered deliberate misinformation. You do see the difference, don’t you? Even ecocide targets corporate interests. Quit being drama-queens.

    ****“If you had ever read Manufacturing Consent, you’d know that even sincere, concerned journalists can find themselves griding out stuff which is not true, or shall we say, not fully informed.”

    And Mingy, Mingy, Mingy – I might point out that the media-as-business is exactly – EXACTLY – how so much misinformation about climate science is being promoted. You could not have provided a better example. People, like these folks here, want very badly to hear about how scientists are misusing their money, lying to them, destroying data, etc. It sells. You want an example? Look at the article hunter just posted. Are you sure you really understand Chomsky’s message?

    By the way, I love the perennial argument that since computer models cannot predict things like stock prices climate models must also be impossible. The “diet guru” is classic. Critical thinking skills have fallen so badly here that Richard does not realize that most “diet gurus” tell overweight people exactly what they want to hear, which is not necessarily viable research. Sounds like anti-AGW gurus. Oh deary men…

  31. Sometimes reading how a true believer disengages their thinking in order to ignore the plain evidence of how their belief- in this case AGW- is promoted by fraudsters is worth really reading:
    “Then again, I’ve seen no convincing evidence that the scientists of AGW have anything but high professional standards. The best denialist evidence is generally something like the CRU emails – which are completely unconvincing. These scientists are simply doing their job; you here simply don’t like what you are hearing.”
    Note how the true believer ignores the substance of climategate- destroying data, corrupting peer review and acknowledging that the data does not support their claim- by simply pretending it is not there.
    And then of course ignoring the IPCC problems of the leadership being paid money in the form of grants and consulting fees by companies that get rich off of selling solutions to the problems the IPCC claims are so grave.
    Waldoodle is owed a a word of thanks for demonstrating true believer syndrome so well. It takes a great deal of effort to deliberately fool one’s self into ignoring fraud.
    The rest of his drool is just more, I am tired, and so I will leave it at this:
    Good job true believer. Well done. Your faith enables you to stop thinking at will.

  32. ****”destroying data, corrupting peer review and acknowledging that the data does not support their claim- by simply pretending it is not there.”

    You know, we have discussed these very emails you are describing here on CS. You were there, hunter. It was one of our first exchanges. So it would be a little hard to pretend that something is not there if one is discussing it. And I disagreed and still do – the CRU hacked emails were much ado about nothing. The official probe agreed. Which would indicate that I am not the “true believer” here not am I the one deliberately fooling himself.

  33. Waldo, or what ever you’re calling yourself these days,

    “and that strange propensity of the human being to become paranoid”

    That sounds a lot more like a catastrophic AGW alarmist than a skeptic to me.

    “****“Proponents can literally swim in grant money.”

    Yeah, I’m sure they are just living to rock star lifestyle. How much money are Mann and Jones making, anyway? Does anyone know?”

    This is a mistake made by a lot of people outside academic research. Grant money is your life/career. You are not directly paid through it, but without it you will perish as a researcher. You know that whole publish or perish thing, well you can’t publish without money to do research. Then of course the more grant money your university takes in, the bigger your departments can grow, which of course allows for the guy at the top to not just be the head of his lab, but the head of a whole “Unit” which certainly comes with a nice raise.

    “Hansen did say that certain big energy executives should stand trial for “crimes against humanity” for disseminating what he considered deliberate misinformation. ”

    Do you seriously not see the insanity in this sentence? Someone convicted of “crimes against humanity” is put to death. So either Hansen is just using some hyperbole here, or he’s throughly off his rocker….Unless you want to explain to me how distributing what HE THINKS is misinformation is a crime worthy of the death penalty.

    “the CRU hacked emails were much ado about nothing. The official probe agreed.”

    Here’s one thing they concluded: “Phil Jones, of the University of East Anglia, was acting “in line with common practice in the climate science community” when he refused to share his raw data and computer codes with critics.”

    So, this is common practice in climate science, so its ok. That’s nice…

    “The committee said that the blame for the mishandling of requests under the Freedom of Information Act lay with the university, which had “found ways to support the culture at CRU of resisting disclosure of information to climate change sceptics”. ”

    Oh so it was the university, at which Jones holds a very prominate position and we’re talking about his work. Certainly Jones had nothing to do with that, right…

    “Phil Willis, the committee’s Liberal Democrat chairman, told The Times: “There is no reason why Professor Jones should not resume his post. He was certainly not co-operative with those seeking to get data, but that was true of all the climate scientists”

    What a field! Nobody can reproduce anyone elses work because no one shares their data/methods. Oh, but there is a consensus, remember! Makes perfect sense.

    So while The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee may have cleared Jones, one, they still found that he should have shared his data, and two, they found the whole field is guilty of not sharing data/methods. This is not the behavior of honest academic scientists (something more like industry research for profit, hmm, PROFIT, gasp), and certainly not an honest and open scientific field from which we should be accepting any “consenses.”

  34. “Hey – as a fat guy I try to read as little as I can about the science of weight gain. However, I figure my weight problem is a result of an over active appetite and insufficient exercise. I’m gonna risk being embarrassed but, are you taking a shot at my comment, or is it true what you are writing about the NIH, etc.?” – Mingy

    It’s 100% true. The fitness industry is full of diet gurus who claim to have The Science! on their side for their particular low carb or high fat diet. When you look at their studies though it’s a bunch of crap; rat studies using megadosing, no controls on calorie intake for groups using different diet approaches, etc. There are actually people out there claiming you can destroy matter and energy, implicitly sending it into some other dimension I guess, by simply avoiding processed carbohydrates. You can see it in the recent movement against high fructose corn syrup, which in reality is just another carbohydrate like any other. Sure, eating twenty pounds of it a day isn’t a good idea, but the reality is it has no more or less energy per gram than any other carbohydrate, nor can ingesting it suddenly make human bodies violate the laws of physic and experience weight gain without excess calories.

    “Hmmm…never heard that one. Personally I doubt that money corrupts skeptics. Rather, I think political ideology, conservative backlash, and that strange propensity of the human being to become paranoid and provoked once a conspiracy theory is voiced corrupt clear thinking. And this is what corrupts skeptics.” – Waldoodle

    I was being sarcastic. It’s one of the things about this debate that most annoys me, that somehow even if skeptics were getting money from Exxon, that this is somehow less corrupting than the billions in grant money floating around for anyone willing to tie anything to global warming.

    “Yeah, I’m sure they are just living to rock star lifestyle. How much money are Mann and Jones making, anyway? Does anyone know?” – Waldoodle

    Economically fallacious. How much would they be making without their AGW bent? How much power and influence would they have without their current study direction? The relevant point regarding their income is not whether they are living like Keith Richards, but how they would be living without being able to ride the AGW gravy train of grant money. I’d wager they have no where near the same income, no where near the same prestige, no where near the same number of powerful people asking for their company and advice, etc. As principle players in the AGW game they get to go on TV and give speeches, and get centers to manage and build their own little empires. Congressman and senators aren’t compensated all that much either monetarily, but you might want to stop and think why someone would take the time and energy to raise millions upon millions of dollars to campaign for election to a position that barely pays six figures. The reason is because there are other forms of compensation at stake.

    “Proof otherwise?” – Waldoodle

    Been living under a rock for the last decade, or the last few months in particular? What you call the highest standards would have landed those same scientists in prison had a the subject of their investigations been a new drug for FDA approval as opposed to AGW.

  35. Waldo{ },
    Yes, you started lying about the e-mails and avoiding what they said from the very beginning. And your point is?
    The official probe is a shoddy whitewash that did not review the facts the questions or the issues.
    But it did serve its task well: to keep the true believers true. As you demonstrate so well.
    But even better in your evasion to ignore the IPCC issues. My only hope is you are in a mutual fund run by the same standards as the IPCC or the CRU and that all of your money is in it.

  36. Waldorph:

    Among all the “fuckwitted” and “Narcissistic rage” comments, has anyone been doing this?

    “Plug in your local stations I would love to hear what others find out.

    “You must start at:

    “http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/”

    I have been (Wisconsin, Texas, Oregon). Netdr, while there are certainly anomalies, I find a consistent trend upwards in virtually all stations, urban and rural. Did you cherry-pick the graphs you posted above?
    ********************
    I have been in all lower 49 states so what?

    I live in the Dallas area and pulled up the DFW temperature record and at first glance it appears to be a “U” shape.
    I lived here in the 1970’s and remember the construction of DFW airport. The future site of DFW was a cow pasture.

    I wondered if it had really warmed like the “U” shape would imply so I pulled up several local sites and found a navel Air station which was semi urban with little construction over the time period and surprise, there was no recent warming.

    Did I cherry pick ? I picked DFW and the Naval Air Station because I live here and know the history of the area.
    I live in Plano [about 15 miles away] and the DFW temperatures are always 2 or 3 degrees F higher than my back yard.

    I don’t impute malice to the people not adjusting for UHI, it is maddeningly difficult and requires accurate information on how population has changed over the years. There has to be a motivation too. The UHI effect clearly makes it seem there is more warming than there is so why would a true believer try to remove it ?

    The fact that UHI was clearly not removed from the the temperature record for DFW means little by itself. I wonder how many other cow pastures have turned into small cities with megatons of concrete ? Every one of those houses has electricity going in and heat leaking out eventually or the house would be unbelievably hot.

    I was hoping someone with local knowledge would plug in their own local surface station.

    “http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/”

    If I looked at Hibing Montana I wouldn’t know much about what I was looking at would I?

  37. Richard,

    “I guess, by simply avoiding processed carbohydrates. You can see it in the recent movement against high fructose corn syrup, which in reality is just another carbohydrate like any other.”

    Not exactly. Your body is not particularly good at recognizing high fructose corn syrup as calories. So you end up thinking/feeling hungrier than you normally would when you eat a lot of HFCS. This is why you can drink a 60 oz soda with about 800 calories not feel full. So the effect is to simulate insulin resistance. Which of course is a hallmark of type 2 diabetes.

    And then of course, we largely use HFCS istead of sugar because of high sugar tariffs, but HFCS is unhealthy, so now our government wants to tax things that have HFCS.

  39. Dang you Waly and your scientific fact, insider information and expert opinion! You’re quashing dissent! You are obviously swimming in grant money! You need to reveal all your data and methodologies right now! Otherwise I refuse to believe you! Clearly, Wally, what you want is to build your department – screw science!! (CS commentators would do soooo much better if they didn’t assume that they knew something, usually fairly obvious, that the rest of the world didn’t. And it’s fairly ironic, Wally, for you to assume I don’t know how academic grant money works. You couldn’t know it’s ironic, of course, but it is still ironic.)

    By the way, if anyone actually wants to read about the East Anglia report (rather than relying on the manufactured consent of the media, for instance) it is here:

    http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HC387-IUEAFinalEmbargoedv21.pdf

    CS is not necessarily known for actually investigating the facts of the matter, I realize. For instance…

    ****”How much would they [Mann, Hansen, et al] be making without their AGW bent? How much power and influence would they have without their current study direction? The relevant point regarding their income is not whether they are living like Keith Richards, but how they would be living without being able to ride the AGW gravy train of grant money.”

    Why, I don’t know, Richard. And neither do you, obviously. But perhaps you should before making public denouncements and accusations against people.

    And Wally, this is complete B.S.

    ****”Nobody can reproduce anyone elses work because no one shares their data/methods.”

    It’s all there. If nothing else, look at the link netdr (who is, in fact, cherry-picking his data here, despite any protestations to the opposite) provided. You are lying, Wally. They all share their data, codes and methods. It’s right there for the world to see. You simply don’t want to see it.

    And no, Richard, I have not “Been living under a rock for the last decade, or the last few months in particular” – I have been here on CS!! Gaining lots of valuable information about how the deniosphere thinks and works. I might respectfully suggest you climb out from under the denio-rock you are under.

  40. Speaking of HFCS and conspiracies, I once wondered if the Coca Cola Company used the whole “New Coke” fiasco as a ploy to switch from cane sugar to HFCS. It turns out the switch happened gradually over the five year period before the New Coke debacle.

    When I searched the internet it turned out I wasn’t alone in pondering this possible “conspiracy”.

    When I visit countries that still use cane sugar in their Coke I find the beverage to be crisper and more refreshing.

  41. Lance,

    For the most part the only soda I will drink is Coke imported from Mexico that is still made with real sugar (usually available at Costco). It costs about twice as much, but in my opinion it easily twice as good. HFCS sodas just don’t hold a candle to sodas with real sugar.

    Waldo,

    First changing your name so frequently only makes you look more like a troll than you already do. And second, how can I be lying when I’m mostly quoting the findings of that investigation. And second, who exactly reproduced the hockey stick? Who reproduced the lack of the MWP and little ice age? And what link are you talking about. Netdr posted maybe a dozen links above, and if I’m not mistaken its all the GISS data. What does GISS have to do with reproducing the hockey stick? That data only goes back, at best, 150 years.

    So please, if you’re going to claim that I am lying, you’re going to have to do a little bit better job of proving it. Cuz right now you just look like a hack throwing blind accusations and rather ridiculous appeals to ridicule around. But I know that’s just your way.

  42. Ah yes, Wally, the unfounded, un-cited “blind accusation” – not much fun is it? You do realize how much denialist rhetoric is founded on just such “blind accusatons”?

    As I writ many a post ago now, I sincerely doubt that you would be quite so placid as you seem to think if your persona was bandied about the Internet in the manner AGW scientists are. Case in point above. Plus you could not have provided a better example of expert knowledge vs. layperson misunderstanding than this funny “HFCS” conversation developing. Ironic, that.

    And yes, I perfectly well realize that you have cherry-picked a number of passages from the document in question which maybe, just maybe, misrepresent the content and intent of the investigation. Just maybe. I am running off right now but will do some of my own picking and posting in the very near future. Let’s see what else the investigation says, shall we?

    But no, I did not realize you were talking about “the hockey stick” above; you simply used the term “data.” Specifics count.

    Now, I did use the gerund of the verb “to lie” above (rather than “posit” or “suggest” or “argue,” etc.) because I believe, Wally, that a man of your intellect and training cannot be unaware of the mass amounts of data, like the GISS link netdr posted, available to anyone with an Internet connection. Rather, I think you choose to argue that this information is withheld from the general public or perhaps you think those of us who disagree with you are too stupid or are too gullible to check up on what you say. To be frank, I believe you are lying a good deal of the time, perhaps even to yourself.

    Tell you what – let’s see what the “hockey stick” and “Medieval Warm Period” controversies are all about, shall we? Let’s post what we find.

    As for the repeated charges of trollism – sure, I’ll gladly wear the term, however you rationalize it. Realize, however, that my behavior on these boards is no less trollish than yours and a good deal less than posters such as hunter. I suspect you would like me to be a “troll” so you can simply dismiss me. But I, like you, am simply a frequent, concerned commentator on these boards who happens to disagree with most of what you write. But if I am a troll, I am a damn good one – trolls only work if what they say stings commentators. And the best way to sting tribes like CS is to bring a measure of truth into the conversation, something, I’ve become convinced, the CS tribe really does not want. Therefore, to these good folks, I “a troll.” Since the bridge does fit, I will probably wear it.

  43. While the true believers slide deeper into their identity crisis and approach ultrasonic levels of shrillness, GISS is once again caught playing games with their temperature massaging to mislead people.
    Check out Finland this month. It is on fire.
    The CRU whitewashes were well done- the faithful continue their denial of problems with AGW, but deep inside they know the game is winding down into a loss.
    Waldo, you are reduced to a parody of yourself in order to feign your confidence. Good luck with that.
    The sign of a good troll is that they post stupid stuff in a voice that mimics ability, by the way. Stick to it- you are one of the great trolls.

  45. ****”Stick to it- you are one of the great trolls.”

    Thank you, hunter! I sometimes get the feeling that my talents are rather under-appreciated here at CS, and so any little shot in the arm makes me feel soooo much better. I will, as you so colloquially writ, “Stick to it.”

    Now, Wally, you posted some excerpts from the “Introduction” (Page 7 in the PDF) from the House of Commons report. I think you may have accidentally given (or gotten) the wrong impression about what the report actually says. I’ve taken the liberty of posting the majority of the summary so that we may see what the committee actual found. For instance –

    “We believe that the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced.”

    Too bad. It would have been much more fun if they had simply roasted him slowly over the open flame of academic censure – and I can only imagine how wildly enthusiastic the denioshphere would have been for this committee report had that happened. But as it turns out, the official report calls blame “misplaced” in this instance. Why?

    “Whilst we are concerned that the disclosed e-mails suggest a blunt refusal to share scientific data and methodologies with others, we can sympathise with Professor Jones, who must have found it frustrating to handle requests for data that he knew—or perceived—were motivated by a desire simply to undermine his work.”

    Let’s see part of that again:

    “Professor Jones, who must have found it frustrating to handle requests for data that he knew—or perceived—were motivated by a desire simply to undermine his work.”

    And again:

    “were motivated by a desire simply to undermine his work.”

    For all his faults – and make no mistake, the committee did find fault with the manner in which data was released – the committee found a rather human response to the antagonistic ethos of the deniosphere. This is part of the practice you and the CS tribe participate in, Wally, and this is part of the outcome. You want results? Try a little respect. Otherwise you too are a troll.

    Then comes the very brief section you quoted:

    “In the context of the sharing of data and methodologies, we consider that Professor Jones’s actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community.”

    Which the committee then qualifies by writing:

    “It is not standard practice in climate science to publish the raw data and the computer code in academic papers.”

    And then the committee concludes that perhaps, in the future, these practices should become standard for everyone’s sake:

    “However, climate science is a matter of great importance and the quality of the science should be irreproachable. We therefore consider that climate scientists should take steps to make available all the data that support their work (including raw data) and full methodological workings (including the computer codes). Had both been available, many of the problems at UEA could have been avoided.”

    The committee finds no fault with private emails in which people spoke to each other in their own culture, their own little slang-argot, and found no evidence that such language was inappropriate for scientists privately communicating. Much ago about nothing, in other words:

    “We are content that the phrases such as ‘trick’ or ‘hiding the decline’ were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead.”

    And finally, the committee finds that any criticism of peer-reviewed papers was done privately and did not represent censorship; they conclude with the notion that (gasp!) it is okay to criticize scientific papers:

    “Likewise the evidence that we have seen does not suggest that Professor Jones was trying to subvert the peer review process. Academics should not be criticised for making informal comments on academic papers.”

    Now, the next thing I expect to see (if there is anyone left who has not fled) is a charge of “whitewashing” or “cover-up” (such charges have already been dropped), but I would like to see specific, documented proof of this. I dare you. What I suspect I will see is more “blind accusations” and generalizations based on hearsay promulgated by the cyber-deniosphere. This will only hold water for so long, despite hunter’s Bagbad Bobish denials.

  46. hunter, I’m just curious, did you actually read Pielke’s post above? Did you understand what he, and the scientists he was communicating with, actually said to each other?

  47. Waldo-troll,
    Yes. Did you, and do you?
    I like this part:
    “However, I do not see how such large amounts of heat could have transited to depths below 700m since 2005 without being detected.”
    And this part,
    “I am very supportive, however, of your recognition that it is heat in Joules that we should be monitoring as a primary metric to monitor global warming. Our research has shown significant biases in the use of the global average surface temperature for this purpose; e.g.”
    And this part,
    “# First, if the heat was being sequestered deeper in the ocean (lower than about 700m), than we would have seen it transit through the upper ocean where the data coverage has been good since at least 2005. The other reservoirs where heat could be stored are closely monitored as well (e.g. continental ice) as well as being relatively small in comparison with the ocean.
    # Second, the melting of glaciers and continental ice can be only a very small component of the heat change (e.g. see Table 1 in Levitus et al 2001
    And this part most of all:
    “Thus, a large amount heat (measured as Joules) does not appear to be stored anywhere; it just is not there.

    There is no “heat in the pipeline” [or “unrealized heat”] as I have discussed most recently in my post”

    Troll on, good Waldo-troll.
    And please keep asking such obvious, smarmy, ignorant questions all you want. It seems to come to you rather well. And it does allow you to pose as if you are clever while ignoring the issues.
    It is sort of like you are a chimp pretending to read a book, only to find that the ape is holding the book upside down.

  48. Waldo-believer,
    By the way, I am completely unsurprised that you would accept a five page paper written by a committee chaired by someone who makes money off of promoting AGW inspired investments concluded that the CRU was doing nothing and that skeptics are big meanies. For the simple minded true believer, the slightest gesture from an authority figure offers all that is needed for successful true believer syndrome denial process. You are in a sense a cheap date for AGW promoters. They do not really have to try at all to keep someone of your capabilities well trained.

  50. Shills,
    True belief enables people to rationalize literally anything. As Solzhenitsyn said, “To do a great evil, one must first be convinced they are doing a great good.”
    The report that you linked to is the one that I pointed is five pages and was written by a committee led by a man who makes his money promoting AGW based investments. In the real world that is called conflict of interest, and the product of a report like this would be called a whitewash.
    But you, like Waldo-troll, are a cheap date for AGW promoters.
    Any excuse is enough to keep you well satisfied, when it comes to AGW.
    You keep to your faith, and keep pretending we are in a climate crisis. It beats thinking, not that you were likely very good at it in the first place.

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