Re: Was the ClimateGate Hacker Justified? Join the Debate!

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:51:54 +0100, Martin Tomasek said:

ooh.. straw man arguments. Where's my Zippo?

> 1) Can you measure temperature with error less than 0.1C?

Why do you *think* they take a whole bunch of measurements and average them?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

> 2) Do you know about how big is measurement uncertainty for your data?

You *do* realize that instrument calibration is a pretty well understood field?

> 3) Do you know that satellite temperature measurements are models, 
> calibrated by ground temperature?

Did you know that the mercury thermometer is just a model based on expansion
and contraction of a liquid? Oh noes, we can't trust them. Or the ones
based on two strips of metal with different coefficients of expansion. Oh
wait, we can't trust *any* measurement, because its a model calibrated against
something else...

> 4) Do you know that most of temperature measurement is done in urban 
> areas, biasing the measurement?

I'm pretty sure everybody is pretty aware it's warmer in the cities, that
effect has been understood for centuries. Heck, my local TV weatherman
will say stuff like "It's going to be about 90F here in Roanoke, and a
little cooler out in the countryside" or even "Driving conditions here
in the city should be OK, but the roads in outlying areas will be freezing
up".

So you're saying that a TV weatherman at a small station knows more
about weather prediction than the guys at IPCC/ Give me a *break*.

Unless youre referring to the fact that there's a higher density of
measurements in urban areas (for example, could be 1 per square mile in
the city but only 1 per 40 square miles in the country).  Rest assured
that is *not* a major challenge for anybody who actually understands how
to do modelling, because you *never* get a nice perfect rectangular mesh
of perfect sensor readings. You get messy data, broken sensors, that
one area you couldn't put sensors into the experiment because there was
a structural support there, the subject sneezed and moved slightly,
etc etc etc.  So dealing with missing/incomplete data has been understood
for as long as scientists have been analyzing datasets.

> 5) Do you know something about 'butterfly effect'? (great differences in 
> state trajectories by some time, which reduces prediction horizont of 
> your model, depending on measurement error)

Did you know that the scientific discipline that first understood the
butterfly effect was, in fact, meteorology?  They've been working at
understanding it longer than anybody else.

> 6) Do you know that reality is more real than any model?

Oh, give me a *fucking* *break*.  It's called the Scientific Method. Make
a hypothesis, see how close it fits to reality, and fix it when it doesn't.

> I am quite sure most of IPCC climate scientists won't pass even 3 of 
> these 6 points. :-((

I'll take that wager. :)

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