McKitrick
Scroll down to "McKitrick Screws Up Yet Again"
"As I noted in my post, correcting the error halves the size of the economic signal in the warming trend, reducing it from 0.16 (out of 0.27) to 0.09. ... Well, all the conclusion says is that there were socioeconomic effects, without mentioning their size. The size of the effects, which change substantially, are only mentioned in the body. And the “bombshell” nature of the paper touted by Michaels et al in their TCS article depends on socioeconomic effects being the primary cause of the warming trend, something that McKitrick has now retracted."
Moving on... I'll ask you the same question that I asked kidd above (he replied that he had no idea). Do you think that the problems with surface station data are significant enough to eliminate the (stated) observed warming of 0.6 C in the 20th century and 0.4 C since the 1980s? I have some ideas I want to put down, but it will take longer than a day; your response to this question will guide my thoughts.
Oh puleeze, quoting Tim Lambert again? If you dont trust McKitrick why should I trust a biased leftist advocate like Tim Lambert who I’ve alredy pointed out has issues of his own? His obligatory slanderous “right wing attack on science,” is right in the first sentence.
He starts off with “Chris Mooney has great article in the The American Prospect ...” Yeah. I’m going to give credence to a left-winger quoting a left-wing *political* magazine on science issues. Pointless gainsaying awaits. Why are you linking to leftwingers on *FR* fer crying out loud?
If you want this to be a debate about the science, stick at least to citing non-leftists.
On the substance, I am not drawing any conclusion from McKitrick except the most narrow one, which is that further adjustment/review of international data is warranted based on possible spurious correlations. So even cutting his signal in half doesn’t change that point. Like the GISS issue, the magnitude is only one factor here; it’s the process of how we make sure the spurious signal is zero that is the point. Same point here as in the GISS recalibration issue. You cite Peterson, but Keenan is poking holes in it. see also:
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/08/surface_temperature_records_in.html
The numbers that fall out await such a review and scrubbing of data and adjustments for accuracy. We shouldn’t trust statements about international numbers/trends with high precision until that has been really done.