Replies

"And they wasted no time downplaying the GISS adjustment. What other problems are lurking in the data? A sane, unbiased scientist, upon discovering one major problem in their datasets, would proceed to examine all other inputs for similar problems, instead of treating the problem data set as an outlier."

I agree with dirtboy's skepticism toward all the data sets. Not too long ago the stratosphere temperatures showed cooling and it was explained as something that would be expected from global warming. Then a correction in the bias was done to the data set and it showed the stratosphere temperatures to be warming and the scientists said that that was exactly what they had expected to see the stratosphere temperatures warming. Can't have it both ways.

I also see from the RealClimate link that they used a weighted formula for temperatures values to arrive at the "average" global temperature. I work in seismic processing and we deal with huge volumes of data and one of the holy grails is to "regularize" data sets and it involves much more than a simple weighted formula. In fact, there is no actual algorithm today in the seismic industry that is even close to 100% accurate and all the various algorithms are very data dependent.

I also have a problem with the concept of "climate sensitivity" being a value for a system in equilibrium when in fact the Earth is a non-equillibrum system in which temperature gradients drive the weather.

These are just random thoughts.

Well, you just kicked the global warming holy grail like an old coffee can. If you normalize a non-equilibrium system as being in equilibrium when you start your models, lo and behold, you are guaranteed to demonstrate climate change! You could run last night's baseball line scores through the model and show climate change.

I love the latest "proof" from the global warming weenies - that their latest wundermodel shows how natural factors are buffering global warming recently, but we're guaranteed to have warming take off come 2009! I wonder how much of that "proof" relied on the pre-adjustment GISS data...

Then a correction in the bias was done to the data set and it showed the stratosphere temperatures to be warming and the scientists said that that was exactly what they had expected to see the stratosphere temperatures warming. Can't have it both ways.

Yes, but you can be confused between the troposphere and the stratosphere, which is what you've done here. The stratosphere has been cooling since satellites started measuring -- primarily due to ozone depletion and secondarily due to global warming. The troposphere was not showing warming (in the Spencer & Christy MLS data set), but they adjusted it -- and 1998 kicked it higher -- and now it does. Other groups analyzing the same data get higher lower troposphere warming trends than Spencer and Christy do.

I also see from the RealClimate link that they used a weighted formula for temperatures values to arrive at the "average" global temperature.

This is required for areas with sparse spatial coverage, for one thing.