See, here's the thing for me: It isn't political.
It is what it is. If the global climate is warming, then it is warming. If it is cooling then it is cooling. It bothers me when I see someone who has data that says something is so and that to mitigate that thing we need to blow a bazillion bucks but you can't look at it because they don't have to time to answer pesky questions. By the time most people are in their 40's they have heard "just trust me" several times in their lives. And maybe they don't have the education to grasp it so they get a "second opinion".
So what would happen if you went to a doctor who said you had something wrong with you and said his diagnostics clearly showed that there was something wrong but fixable but the fix is very expensive and will change your life forever. So you go to another doctor who does his own diagnostics and doesn't see anything abnormal. So he asks the first doctor to see his results and the first doctor refuses. Says "nope, I can't be bothered with your harassing me for the information". He won't let anyone see your x-rays or your test results and complains that your new doctor has never written a paper on how to take x-rays so his must be faulty ... but no, he will still not share his data even though you paid for it.
THAT is the problem here. And then when someone attempts, for example, to audit the thermometers that are used to collect this climate data and discovers thermometers in the middle of asphalt parking lots next to brick walls and air conditioning units:
not once but many times and discovers that some 80% of the recording stations of a "high quality" climate monitoring network doesn't even meet its own standards for location to get an accurate measurement .... then there is something terribly wrong.
It is like finding out your first doctor was using an x-ray machine set up all wrong to get your diagnostic results. So maybe your doctor says "it doesn't matter" (which was Gavin Schmidt's actual response when it was pointed out that the data they were collecting was bad from the start and biased warm).
There were two major events that biased US stations warm. One was the change from whitewash of the old wooden thermometer screens to latex paint. (the switch is ad hoc with some people simply deciding on their own to use paint which is against the siting recommendations) Whitewash is IR reflective. Latex paint is IR transparent. This means that when they switched, the wood in the screens themselves warmed up and radiated more heat inside the Stevenson screen warming the readings. This happened gradually over many years as stations were repainted so while there is often a "step up" in the individual station records, there is no "step up" in the overall average ... it is a gradual ramp up.
Then came the transition from mechanical recording thermometers to electronic devices. This caused two problems. The first was that the machines initially shipped had a bad sensor device that produced abnormally high readings. This was discovered when a reading several degrees above the readings of surrounding mechanical stations was observed and investigated. These initial sensors were replaced but their faulty data stands in the climate data still influencing "global warming" today. The second problem was that wireless networks were not developed to the state they are now and these sensors came with only 50 feet of cable (as you can see in the photograph above). So the sensor had to be located within 50 feet of power and the computer that collected the data. This means that stations where a Stevenson screen was located in a place that met siting standards was replaced with a station that often violated every single published criteria there is. As a result, there was more "warming" in the record while rural stations still using Stevenson screens, mechanical thermometers, and whitewash show no increase such increase.
Garbage in, garbage out. But Gavin says "it doesn't matter", we "adjust" for that. Ok, fine, show your adjustment method. "nope".
So if you go back and audit the sites, select sites in rural areas (not affected by urbanization such as blacktop, concrete, etc) that meet siting requirements ... wow! ... their data looks just like the satellite measured data.
Ok, so now the satellite data. There are two sets; UAH and RSS. UAH uses a satellite in polar orbit whose orbit is "maintained". What that means is that as the satellite makes a pass over each location twice a day (once in daylight and once at night), it passed over each target at exactly the same time each day. Its orbit is not allowed to "drift". RSS uses a satellite that drifts so the time it takes its measurement changes over time. So while it might pass over BRC at 10am, next month it might be passing over at 10:15am and the data is compared to surface measurements and a mechanism to adjust for time of observation (TO) is applied which changes as the satellite drifts. Despite this drift, the two satellite measurements are surprisingly close in both value and trend. They both tend to rise and fall together but the absolute values might be different.
Values taken from Tamino's (Grant Foster's) website.
They are pretty close and unlike anything coming out of GISS or CRU. Why? Because GISS and CRU make a lot of guesses and in the case of GISS include model output not real observations into their data set. The satellites are real measurements not only of ALL of the 30% of the Earth that is land (urban and rural) but also the 70% that is ocean. They measure the entire planet with the same instrument rather than measuring over 30% of the planet with instruments of various quality placed at random intervals with some huge gaps in coverage (South America and Africa being huge gaps in coverage). And they you apply this secret adjustment sauce to the data that you don't let anyone see and BINGO! A Completely Different Result. CRUT and GISS even differ by more than the satellites do, not only in value but often in sign. This is because they use different sauce and the secret is in the sauce.
One thing I don't like is a quack. And when a quack goes to great lengths to hide things and claim that simply wanting to see them is "harassment", then it is grounds for me to dismiss their "work".
This can be cleared up very easily. Open up the code and the data to scrutiny. The data is what it is. Where did it come from and what did you do with it. That is all people want to know. It is a very reasonable request if we are going to base policy on those results.
Now Gavin is making a pretty good PR effort over at RC but is still deflecting attention from the core issue: When will the data and methods be opened to scrutiny? They play a very interesting game of claiming "peer review" of their papers but go to great lengths to avoid "peer review" of their data and methods unless A: they pick who are "peers" and B: the data and methods remain secret.
It isn't science. It is "science".
Pabst Blue Ribbon - The beer that made Gerlach famous.
