Originally posted by Curious and Concerned
Hey Mel, I've been away for a while. Gareth does in fact try to represent himself as some kind of authoritive figure on climate change over at
hot topic.
But you'd be forgiven for not knowing this, as it is mostly just an echo chamber for AGW scare stories and political fear mongering. Not really a lot
to look at. I tried to find the post where they use a fictional book showing the effects of hypothetical rises in temperatre up to 6 degrees, and then
claim that that is what we are headed for. It's quite funny, but I couldn't find it, sorry.
Nothing to be sorry about. Sounds a bit like Mark Lynas' book. All based on research and is a potential future. Hope festivus is going well, by the
way.
As for Gareth Renowden, he says he's a journalist and author. Not really posing under labels of 'climate coalition' etc.
I know you appear to be confident that all is well with the record, even without seeing what changes have been made. But the fact is they
haven't released their adjustments, and have used broad based explanations to dismiss any questions regarding them.
Sure that should be the reason they have been adjusted. But have they been adjusted correctly? Or is it like the Darwin adjustments across the ditch
in Oz.
It's not a case of 'all is well'. No data is perfect. That just doesn't happen. The old data was originally not collected for the purpose it's
now being used for, however, data is like bleedin' gold-dust. So you use it the best you can when you can.
It's quite interesting that I'm starting to see a trend here. Raw data showing variation but little to no warming trend. Then the
"homogenization" suddenly showing a clear warming trend...
Nah, nothing to see here. 
But that would be an error. That's mainly because deniers go looking
specifically for stations to raise such issues in the mind of the less
informed. Just a case of poisoning the well.
These same stations have been doing the rounds for years.
Seriously though, I'm happy to see that these adjustments have been done correctly. But just saying they did without knowing is foolish, so
I'll wait till the appropriate responses have been made.
Of course, but like I showed earlier you can see why some adjustments are made. It would be ridiculous to use their data and not adjust.
The choices available include:
1. do what the denier did and suggest that moving stations from one spot to another is not important, and string the data together. Totally
inappropriate and quite deceptive of the guy. But, hey, the dude's a denier, I would expect no less.
2. Throw the data away/not use. Often silly, as data is gold-dust and it makes sense to use it if possible. Sometimes it just isn't, of course.
3. Make appropriate adjustments to produce a more consistent set of data. The best option when possible.
And for the Australian data they have already said why the some adjustment are necessary:
A change in the type of thermometer shelter used at many Australian observation sites in the early 20th century resulted in a sudden drop in
recorded temperatures which is entirely spurious. It is for this reason that these early data are currently not used for monitoring climate change.
Other common changes at Australian sites over time include location moves, construction of buildings or growth of vegetation around the observation
site and, more recently, the introduction of Automatic Weather Stations.
dinky-link
and also in a 2004 article
here.
However, the funny thing about the Darwin palaver is that you can see how GISS treat the data for that station here:
data.giss.nasa.gov...
Try 'Darwin' 'after homogeneity adjustment'. Tell me what you see, lol.
[edit on 27-12-2009 by melatonin]