More Global Warming Temp. Data Problems

I agree - I wish Michaels were not aligned with CATO. Not that I have against CATO or other policy organizations per se but it does introduce the question of bias.

However, despite that relationship, bear in mind that Michaels was a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, was chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society, is well published in the field and has been a past contributing author and reviewer to the IPCC.

So he is certainly well qualified. Is he biased in what he articulates here? Well, we will have to see how the paper holds up in order to know.

 

OK - had a chance to skim RC Scott. There are some interesting issues raised - as I said - we will have to see how this paper holds up to review and additional study. But as the author notes in response, a few whacks by RealClimate are really not enough - it will require true peer review and a statistical model that can demonstrate where inadequacies in the paper - if any - lie. Until that is performed, this paper stands as the most current evaluation of the situation - and it is not encouraging for those who place a high degree of confidence in the temperature data in question.

From Ross M's reply on RealClimate:

“Your conclusion says that there may very well be some contamination of the data. I suppose this admission represents progress. But considering the importance of the data at issue, is this an adequate response on your part? I have made the case that there is substantial contamination of the data. You don’t accept my results, which is your prerogative, but if you want to argue that there is only a small contamination problem, taking into account both surface processes and inhomogeneities (i.e. not just UHI effects), you should make the case with clear empirical methods...

...For those who are convinced that the paper and its results are just wrong, wrong, wrong, you have to put your arguments into the form of a testable hypothesis. My paper takes the hypothesis that local temperature trends are independent of local economic activity and shows that it fails a test. Various speculations have been offered above to the effect that surface data are not contaminated but these test scores could nonetheless be obtained under restricted conditions. Maybe you’re right, but you’re going to need an encompassing statistical model to show it.”

Fortunately for science, the author is willing to make data and methods available for further scrutiny - unlike the situation with Mann's "hockey stick" work and the recent debacle with NASA / Hansen's surface temperature dataset.