Mosher is afraid to come over here and is posting more nonsense on WUWT.
Mosher’s stupidity and dishonesty are impressive.
4. I spent way too much time with his old code, could not find a single line supporting any of the graphs
His inability to analyze and run code which thousands of other people have used is very telling but quite believable for the crew of incompetents at Berkeley Earth.
Plus, he is using a TINY subset of data to cherry pick his results. There are 19,000 Stations in the US he ignores and 42,000 stations in the rest of the world he ignores
The USHCN dataset (which NOAA has been using for decades) is about 1,200 stations which were chosen because of the quality of the stations. I didn’t choose them, NOAA did. Gavin says you only need half that many.
Gavin Schmidt: Global weather services gather far more data than we need. To get the structure of the monthly or yearly anomalies over the United States, for example, you’d just need a handful of stations, but there are actually some 1,100 of them. You could throw out 50 percent of the station data or more, and you’d get basically the same answers.
NASA Climatologist Gavin Schmidt Discusses the Surface Temperature Record
There is no reason to use more US stations. The quality of the USHCN stations is infinitely superior to the garbage set of global stations which Berkeley Earth uses. Mosher’s argument is idiotic, at best. And as Nick Stokes and Zeke have explained, there is very good reason not to use all of the US stations. It is called “changing station composition.”
The number of US GHCN stations has changed dramatically over time.
Stations are being added at more southerly locations.
The quality of reporting at the new stations has been declining.
Even if you use all of the US GHCN stations, you get basically the same pattern. The frequency of hot days is declining.
A better experiment would be to use all US GHCN stations which have been continuously active over the past century. This eliminates the problem of changing station composition and produces results almost identical to the USHCN dataset. Maximum temperatures are declining, as is the frequency of hot days.
The addition of a large number of US GHCN stations in the 1950s (mostly at lower latitudes) introduced about 0.3°F warming bias.
There is very good reason not to use all of the US GHCN stations. Mosher has no clue what he is talking about, and is directly contradicting Zeke and Nick about changing station composition.
No matter how many times Mosher and his friends lie about it, there is no correlation between CO2 and hot weather.
And I’m not ignoring the complete set of global stations. Quite the opposite. I’m documenting that they don’t exist. Without daily temperature data, GHCN station data is illegitimate. There is no such thing as a monthly thermometer.
Read more at Real Climate Science
I don’t completely agree with Tony’s statement that, “…to use all US GHCN stations which have been continuously active over the past century… eliminates the problem of changing station composition…”
It’s a good idea, and it does solve the problem of stations “moving around.” But it doesn’t solve another sort of “changing station composition” problem: the problem of changing surroundings at individual station locations. Most commonly/obviously, stations which were initially well-sited in rural locations may become suburban or urban stations as cities grow, causing a warming bias. OTOH, stations which were in open fields may become shaded as trees grow up around them, causing a cooling bias. Either way, a spurious trend may be recorded.
Dave, maintenance would have prevented the shade issue. Trim the trees or move the station. Same for urban sprawl, move the stations beyond the effect.
It seems that these weather stations didn’t matter until the Greenhouse Effect was invented.
We need to send all these global Warming nutcases to another world far way from here but Krypton and Preplanus are no longer avlible
I don’t know the particulars of this argument, but the graphics presented have issues that leave me unconvinced that “No matter how many times Mosher and his friends lie about it, there is no correlation between CO2 and hot weather.”
These graphs show the maximum (or % greater than 90 degrees) temps averaged for the whole year across the entire U.S. Is it possible, maybe, that there is a little detail lost here that is important to interpretation? It’s well-known that different regions have had different temperature trends. What about the effects of volcanoes, El Ninos and El Ninas?
“The quality of reporting at the new stations has been declining.” His graph doesn’t show this. His graph shows the number of valid days overall has declined, especially in the last few decades. This could be because newer ones replaced old ones that were no longer performing (well).
All this ignores satellite data.
“The addition of a large number of US GHCN stations in the 1950s (mostly at lower latitudes) introduced about 0.3°F warming bias.” This shows the inherent problem of taking a bunch of data, graphing it, and trying to draw conclusions. What if over time there was a gradual increase in stations at high altitudes? That would cause a temperature decline over time that was simply an artifact of the placement of additional stations.
“And I’m not ignoring the complete set of global stations. Quite the opposite. I’m documenting that they don’t exist. Without daily temperature data, GHCN station data is illegitimate.” Ummm…there do seem to be stations at various places, so why not examine these? A “complete set” is just a set – there is no standard for completeness.
Besides, the fact that there weren’t weather stations all over the world in 1900 isn’t in itself significant, especially since the graphs for the U.S. only go back to 1917. How about plotting the global averages since 1950, for instance? (Was the U.S. really so completely covered with stations in 1900??? What, were we weather fanatics compared to every other nation?)
We have the luxury of time to qualify and quantify the evidence. Then frame a logical, non-partisan analysis of that evidence. Shouldn’t that process be settled first? Civilization exists because we have a legal system. We need to establish a similar system for the AGW matter. No bias allowed.
Satellite data looks solid. Don’t tamper with that data, collect it consistently . Go after the question like humanity needs an honest answer.
Proponents from all sides are cherry-picking data and arguments. Stop it.