Ars Technica: Climate deniers cause Frontiers in Psychology to retract sound Lewandowsky paper due to fears of legal action

Journal pulls paper due to “legal context” created by climate contrarians

Denier bloggers studied by psychologist find his conclusions defamatory

by John Timmer, Ars Technica, March 21, 2014

B Rosen

Two years ago, a group of researchers published a paper with a provocative title: "NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax." In the paper, they noted that a subset of the community that has a hard time accepting the evidence for human-driven climate change tends to more generally believe conspiracy theories.

Ironically, the community responded with... conspiracy theories. Which some of the original authors then analyzed in a paper that was accepted for publication in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. But shortly after its appearance, the article was pulled from the journal website and has existed in an unusual academic limbo since. Today, Frontiers has confirmed that the paper will be pulled permanently—not due to any flaws in it or misconduct by its authors, but because its "legal context is unclear." All indications are that lack of clarity involves some of its subjects threatening defamation suits.

The initial paper produced results that weren't entirely surprising. By surveying visitors to climate blogs, its authors found that free-market fans tended to reject scientific findings that had potential regulatory implications, something that's been found by a variety of other researchers. But it also found that there is a population of people who doubt scientific findings simply because they tended to doubt nearly everything, ascribing a variety of things—the Moon landings, the World Trade Center attacks, etc.—to conspiracies. This might seem surprising, but the results held up when the same authors extended the study to the US population in general.

What's probably less surprising is that some of the subjects of the initial paper responded with a new set of conspiracy theories, focused on the paper itself. A number of parties (including some that run popular climate contrarian blogs) suggested that the researchers never actually contacted their study's sources, or that nefarious parties had faked answers in order to make the climate contrarians look bad. (You can see similar things in the comments on our coverage of the paper.)

So, some of the same authors got together and analyzed these responses, putting together a paper entitled "Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation." In the paper (Table 3 specifically), they ascribe specific conspiratorial beliefs to a number of popular contrarian bloggers, including Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. The paper was accepted for publication by the open access journal Frontiers in Psychology and appeared briefly on its website.

But then, as noted, it disappeared. In its place was a notice that stated, "This article, first published by Frontiers on 18 March 2013, has been the subject of complaints. Given the nature of some of these complaints, Frontiers has provisionally removed the link to the article while these issues are investigated."

Today, however, news broke that the paper wouldn't be coming back. The publisher, Frontiers, referred our questions to its lawyer, Michael Kenyon. Kenyon confirmed that the paper would be permanently removed and replaced with the following notice:

In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors.

Kenyon told Ars separately that Frontiers' investigation had found that there were no issues with the paper itself or the research ethics of its authors. "Frontiers is concerned about solid science," he said, "and it's obviously a regret when you have to retract an article that is scientifically and ethically sound."

So, what is the unclear legal context? That seems to have been provided by the climate activist site DeSmogBlog, which obtained a large trove of documents through Freedom of Information requests; it has now placed these online. There are many, many allegations of misconduct sent to both Frontiers and the University of Western Australia, where the lead author, Stephan Lewandowsky, was based at the time.

Although the identities of those making the complaints have been redacted, the authors can sometimes be inferred by the details of the complaints.

A number of the complaints are couched in legal terms, such as "defamatory," "malice aforethought," "intent to deceive," and "reckless disregard for the truth." At least one mentions consultations with a lawyer, all of which suggests that the legal context involves fear of a lawsuit filed by one or more members of the contrarian community.

Although Frontiers has decided it wants no part of this legal environment, Lewandowsky has consulted with the lawyers at the University of Western Australia, where he was based during the research. They are apparently willing to deal with any legal complaints; as a result, "Recursive Fury" remains available from a UWA server.

When asked for comment, Lewandowsky forwarded Ars a letter he received from the staff of the Australian Psychological Society. In it, they note they are "concerned about the possible reasons behind Frontiers’ decision to retract the article, particularly given that their investigation has not identified any significant issues with the academic and ethical aspects of this study. It is concerning that some scientific journals feel sufficiently threatened by potential liability fears to not publish articles with ‘inconvenient information’ about climate change."

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/journal-pulls-paper-due-to-legal-context-created-by-climate-contrarians/

Science Journal Set To Retract Paper Linking Climate Change Scepticism To Conspiracy Theorists After Sceptics Shout Libel

by Graham Readfearn, DeSmogBlog, March 20, 2014

A psychology journal is said to be preparing to retract a scientific paper that found a link between conspiratorial thinking and the rejection of global warming science after climate sceptics claimed the paper was defamatory.

DeSmogBlog has learned the paper's four authors, led by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, the chair of cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol, have signed gagging orders preventing them from discussing the nature of the complaints about their work, carried out when Lewandowsky was a professor at the University of Western Australia.

News of an alleged pending retraction, by the Switzerland-based journal Frontiers in Psychology, has leaked onto climate sceptic blogs but the journal is yet to make a formal announcement.

But DeSmogBlog can reveal that Freedom of Information (FOI) documents obtained last June, but revealed here for the first time, show that climate sceptics complained that the work was defamatory.

The FOI covers complaints sent to Perth-based UWA and also to Frontiers related to the disputed paper Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation.

Lewandowsky’s research has been subjected to a litany of complaints and Freedom of Information requests, mainly from climate science “sceptics.”

Retractions of academic research in peer-reviewed publications are rare events.

Speaking to DeSmogBlog, Lewandowsky said because the reports had come from sources which relied on information “not in the public domain” he did not wish to comment. But he added: 

I can confidently say that the University of Western Australia has not upheld any complaints against me from any party on any matter whatsoever. Beyond that, I cannot go into specifics.

DeSmogBlog has contacted the journal for clarification but understands from other sources that at this stage, a retraction is imminent. The uncertainty around the Recursive Fury paper is the latest twist in a scientific saga which stretches back to mid-2010.

Four-year saga 

As reported on DeSmogBlog, in May 2012 research by Lewandowsky and his team at the University of Western Australia was published in the journal Psychological Science.

The research reported that rejection of the science of human-caused climate change was linked to the acceptance of conspiracy theories, such as NASA faking the moon landing.

Lewandowsky's research team analysed answers to surveys posted on climate blogs during 2010. While five “sceptical” blogs were approached to host the survey, none accepted the invitation.

The publication prompted climate sceptics to launch a flood of commentary and issue complaints to the journal and to UWA.

The university received several Freedom of Information requests asking for correspondence relating to the research. Several sceptics called for for investigations to be carried out and complained that researchers did not have proper “ethics” approvals for the study.

FOI documents previously released show the complaints about ethics approvals were “baseless” and that Lewandowsky had carefully followed ethics guidelines.

After the research was published, a large number of “sceptic” bloggers and commentators came up with their own conspiracy theories relating to the way the research had been carried out.

Some suggested Lewandowsky had “faked” a claim that he had approached skeptic blogs, when FOI documents show the approaches to sceptics. There were claims that “warmists” had “scammed” the surveys providing answers that would make sceptics look bad.

Others claimed that the results of the survey had been “pre-ordained.” Lewandowsky and co-author Klaus Oberauer explained how even when outlier data was removed, the central finding of the paper held.

Canada-based mining industry veteran and Climate Audit blogger Steven McIntyre, also complained to Psychological Science, questioning whether the research had been carried out with adequate ethics approval. McIntyre encouraged people to complain to UWA and posted on a blog site the email addresses of the university’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor Robyn Owens.

UWA investigated and told Psychological Science the “research … was conducted in compliance with all applicable ethical guidelines,” and that complaints on these grounds were baseless.

More evidence

The flurry of conspiratorial responses on climate blogs appeared to be further evidence of the link Lewandowsky had found between “conspiracist ideation” and the rejection of climate science. To see if this was the case, Lewandowsky led another study analysing the online response to his Psychological Science study.

The researchers looked at 69 responses posted on 10 skeptic blogs, including Climate Audit run by Steve McIntyre, Marc Morano’s Climate Depot and blogs managed by Anthony Watts and Australian Joanne Nova.

This “Recursive Fury” research was submitted to the journal Frontiers in Psychology in early 2013 and was published online in March 18 of that year. The authors wrote:

Using established criteria to identify conspiracist ideation, we show that many of the hypotheses exhibited conspiratorial content and counterfactual thinking.

As well as identifying the blogs, the research also identified comments by individuals that were categorised as exhibiting certain styles of thought, such as “nefarious intent” and “unreflexive counterfactual thinking.”

But after several complaints from climate sceptics the journal had removed the paper by the end of the month. The journal said at the time: “Given the nature of some of these complaints, Frontiers has provisionally removed the link to the article while these issues are investigated.”

The research was viewed more than 30,000 times before the paper was removed from the publisher’s website.

Seperately, Lewandowsky led another study, published in the journal PLOS ONE in October 2013, which also found a link between acceptance of conspiracy theories and the rejection of the science of human-caused climate change. 

This study used a different method to gather the data – a survey of 1,000 Americans – but, as I wrote in The Guardian, the study found nearly identical results.

Some complainants had suggested that because Lewandowsky had been “hostile” towards them in blog posts, this constituted a conflict of interest.

The FOI documents also show that by early May, UWA had at that stage already looked at many aspects of the complaints and dismissed them. 

An email from Frontiers to UWA on May 2013 states: “Many thanks for your message and the letter informing us of UWA's decision that no breach of the Australian Code for Responsible Research occurred in the research leading to the article known as 'Recursive Fury,' and the recommendations concerning conflicts of interest.”

Gagging orders hide libel threats

While DeSmogBlog understands the authors of the paper have signed confidentiality agreements preventing them from discussing the nature of the complaints, FOI documents and pre-existing blog posts show how the journal was facing accusations that the paper was defamatory.

One blogger, Geoff Chambers, wrote to Frontiers asking that the paper be withdrawn because it was defamatory towards him.

In FOI documents another climate sceptic blogger forwards a complaint they had made to the Frontiers journal. The complaint said: “I have sought legal advice which has confirmed that, as long as a reasonable number of blog readers are aware of my true identity and professional reputation (which is the case), I could potentially have a defamation action against the authors and publishers of this paper for an outright lie that was told about me.”

Later in the letter, the blogger added: “I hope that you will see that this was a clear case of quote falsification, academic misconduct and defamation and that the paper will now be permanently withdrawn.”

In two complaints, Steve McIntyre wrote that the paper had identified him as exhibiting “six aspects of conspiracist ideation,” a characterisation which he disagreed with, and that the authors had not been given ethics approval for the recursive study.

At one point, McIntyre complains that blog posts written by Lewandowsky were “stimuli” and that he was an unwitting participant in an experiment.

Writing on the Watts Up With That blog, McIntyre said earlier today:

The Lewandowsky article made a variety of defamatory and untrue allegations against me with malice. I accordingly sent a strongly worded and detailed letter to the journal formally requesting that they withdraw the allegations and retract the article. I didn’t “instigate a libel lawsuit” or get “a lawyer involved” but the letter was a formal one. It was my hope that the journal would recognize the many defects of the Lewandowsky article and behave responsibly, as they eventually did.

DeSmogBlog has asked Frontiers for clarification on the status of the study.

In McIntyre's complaint letters (seen as item numbers 95 and 99 on the FOI document release), the Canadian blogger uses quotes hacked from a private forum of the Skeptical Science blog, founded University of Queensland academic John Cook and co-author on the Recursive study.

McIntyre cites the quotes in an attempt to demonstrate “malice” against him, even though none of those quotes was written by any of the authors of the paper.

The University of Western Australia's Deputy Vice-Chancellor Robyn Owens said she had no comment to make at this stage. 

http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/03/20/science-journal-retracts-paper-showing-how-climate-change-sceptics-were-conspiracy-theorists-after-sceptics-shout

Climate science denial conspiracy theorists react to research on them by coming up with -- wait for it -- a conspiracy theory! ROFLMAO!!!

Research Links Climate Science Denial To Conspiracy Theories, But Skeptics Smell A Conspiracy

by Graham Readfearn, DeSmogBlog, September 5, 2012

IF the world's conspiratorial blogosphere was broken up into food items on a wedding buffet table, then an eclectic array of plate-fillers would surely be on offer.

There would be canapés topped with faked moon landings and hors d'oeuvres of Government-backed plots to assassinate civil rights leaders.

Sandwich fillings would come from US military staff at Roswell in New Mexico (cheese and alien, anyone?). The alcoholic punch would be of the same vintage as that which the British Royal family gave Princess Diana's chauffeur, as part of their plot to kill her. All of the catering would be provided by the New World Order.

Then there's the salad of human-caused climate change being a hoax, with the world's climate scientists, national academies and the declining Arctic sea-ice all in on the conspiracy.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Western Australia (UWA), is about to publish research which shows that a strong indicator of the rejection of climate science is a willingness to accept conspiracy theories.

His paper, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, is titled "NASA faked the moon landing - Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science".

The study details the results of a controlled online questionnaire posted on blogs between August and October 2010.

Among the conspiracy theories tested, were the faking of Apollo moon landings, US government agencies plotting to assassinate Martin Luther King, Princess Diana's death being organised by members of the British Royal family and the US military covering up the recovery of an alien spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico.

In the paper, Lewandowsky concludes that "endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories... predicts rejection of climate science". The research also claims a correlation between people who endorse free-market economics and the "rejection of climate science".

He told DeSmogBlog:

There's a fair bit of previous literature to suggest that conspiratorial thinking is part of science denial. Conspiratorial thinking is where people would seek to explain events by appealing to invisible, powerful collusions amongst individuals, rather than taking events at face value. The absence of evidence for the conspiracy is sometimes taken as evidence of its existence and any contradictory evidence is itself embedded into the conspiracy.

In his paper, Lewandowsky adds: "Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientic findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer."

Given the well documented links between free market think-tanks and climate science misinformation, this finding isn't surprising.

But back to that "conspiracist ideation" trait which Lewandowsky and other researchers, such as Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee, have identified among people who reject science.

Because rather fittingly, no sooner had Lewandowsky's paper begun to make headlines than the world's loose, nimble and definitely-not-conspiring network of climate skeptic blogs began to construct their own conspiracies about Lewandowsky's research.

The survey was conducted online and Lewandowsky's research team approached climate blogs requesting they post a link to the survey. Some eight "pro-science" blogs agreed to post the link, which gained 1147 responses.

Lewandowsky's researchers also emailed five popular skeptic blogs, but none of those approached posted the link to the questionnaire.

But had Lewandowsky actually fabricated the claim he had emailed five sceptic blogs, asked Anthony Watts, Jo Nova and others, smelling a consipracy. 

Steve McIntyre, a long-time mining industry consultant and active climate sceptic, even encouraged blog readers to email the ethics department at Lewandowsky's university.

"If Lewandowky’s claim about five skeptic blogs was fabricated, it appears to me that it would be misconduct under university policies," wrote McIntyre.

Once McIntyre had come down from the conclusion he had just jumped to, he later admitted that actually, he had been emailed by one of Lewandowsky's researchers after all but offered a "dog ate my homework" excuse.

Meanwhile, Lewandowsky says he has been "inundated" with requests to release the names of the four remaining bloggers his team contacted.

But since the approaches to bloggers were conducted on the presumption of privacy, the academic has asked his university's ethics committee and the Australian Psychological Society if he is free to release their identities.

Not content to wait, Australian skeptic blogger Simon Turnill has sent a Freedom of Information request to UWA asking for Lewandowsky's emails. Lewandowsky told DeSmogBlog:

So now there's a conspiracy theory going around that I didn't contact them. It's a perfect, perfect illustration of conspiratorial thinking. It's illustrative of exactly the process I was analysing. People jump to conclusions on the basis of no evidence. I would love to be able to release those emails if given permission, because it means four more people will have egg on their faces. I'm anxiously waiting the permission to release this crucial information because it helps to identify people who engage in conspiratorial thinking rather than just searching their inboxes.

Lewandowsky revealed that two of the five skeptic blogs approached even replied to the email they were sent.

One stated "Thanks. I will take a look” and another asked "Can you tell me a bit more about the study and the research design?"

Perhaps an inbox search for these phrases might help some bloggers to move on from their latest conspiracy theory.

Or maybe, just maybe, the real story is that the New World Order hacked their email accounts or a CIA operative secretly dropped a memory-lapse drug into their fake moon juice?

Desmogblog (http://s.tt/1mwBG)

Skeptical Science: Watts' New Paper: Analysis and Critique

Watts' New Paper: Analysis and Critique

by dana1981 and Kevin C , Skeptical Science, August 2, 2012

"An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends" by A. Watts, E. Jones, S. McIntyre and E. R. Christy 

In an unpublished paper, Watts et al. raise new questions about the adjustments applied to the U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) station data (which also form part of the GHCN global dataset). Ultimately the paper concludes "that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled."  However, this conclusion is not supported by the analysis in the paper itself.  Here we offer preliminary constructive criticism, noting some issues we have identified with the paper in its current form, which we suggest the authors address prior to submittal to a journal.  As it currently stands, the issues we discuss below appear to entirely compromise the conclusions of the paper.

The Underlying Problem

In reaching the conclusion that the adjustments applied to the USHCN data spuriously double the actual trend, the authors rely on the difference between the NCDC homogenised data (adjusted to remove non-climate influences, discussed in detail below) and the raw data as calculated by Watts et al.  The conclusion therefore relies on an assumption that the NCDC adjustments are not physically warranted.  They do not demonstrate this in the paper.  They also do not demonstrate that their own ‘raw’ trends are homogeneous. 

Ultimately Watts et al. fail to account for changing time of observations, that instruments change, or that weather stations are sometimes relocated, causing them to wrongly conclude that uncorrected data is much better than data that takes all this into account.  

Changing Time of Observations

The purpose of the paper is to determine whether artificial heat sources have biased the USHCN data.  However, accounting for urban heat sources is not the only adjustment which must be made to the raw temperature data.  Accounting for the time of observations (TOB), for example, is a major adjustment which must be made to the raw data (i.e., see Schaal et al. 1977 and Karl et al. 1986). 

For example, if observations are taken and maximum-minimum thermometers reset in the early morning, near the time of minimum temperature, a particularly cold night may be double-counted, once for the preceding day and once for the current day.  Conversely, with afternoon observations, particularly hot days will be counted twice for the same reason.  Hence, maximum and minimum temperatures measured for a day ending in the afternoon tend to be warmer on average than those measured for a day ending in the early morning, with the size of the difference varying from place to place.

Unlike most countries, the United States does not have a standard observation time for most of its observing network. There has been a systematic tendency over time for American stations to shift from evening to morning observations, resulting in an artificial cooling of temperature data at the stations affected, as noted by Karl et al. (1986).  In a lecture, Karl noted:

"There is practically no time of observation bias in urban-based stations which have taken their measurements punctually always at the same time, while in the rural stations the times of observation have changed.  The change has usually happened from the afternoon to the morning.  This causes a cooling bias in the data of the rural stations.  Therefore one must correct for the time of observation bias before one tries to determine the effect of the urban heat island"

Note in Watts Figure 16, by far the largest adjustments (in the warming direction) are for rural stations, which is to be expected if TOB is introducing a cool bias at those stations, as Karl discusses.

Instruments Change, Stations Move

As Zeke Hausfather has also discussed, the biggest network wide inhomogeneity in the US record is due to the systematic shift from manually-read, liquid-in-glass thermometers placed in a louvred screen (referred to in the U.S. as a Cotton Region Shelter and elsewhere as a Stevenson screen) to automated probes (MMTS) in cylindrical plastic shelters across large parts of the network in the mid- to late-1980s. This widespread equipment change caused an artificial cooling in the record due to differences in the behaviour of the sensors and the sheltering of the instruments. This is discussed in a number of papers, for example Menne et al. 2009 and 2010, and like TOB does not appear to be accounted for by Watts et al.

Additionally, the Watts paper does not show how or whether the raw data were adjusted to account for issues such as sites closing or moving from one location to another. The movement of a site to a location with a slightly different mean climatology will also result in spurious changes to the data. The Watts paper provides no details as to how or whether this was accounted for, or how the raw data were anomalised.

Quite simply, the data are homogenised for a reason. Watts et al. are making the case that the raw data are a ‘ground truth’ against which the homogenisations should be judged. Not only is this unsupported in the literature, the results in this paper do nothing to demonstrate that. It is simply incorrect to assume that all the trends in raw data are correct, or that differences between raw and adjusted data are solely due to urban heat influences.

The Amplification Factor

The conclusion regarding the lower surface temperature warming trend is also at odds with the satellite temperature data.  Over the continental USA (CONUS), satellites show a 0.24 °C per decade warming trend over the timeframe in question.  According to Klotzbach et al. (2010), which the Watts paper references, there should be an amplification factor of ~1.1 between surface and lower troposphere temperatures over land (greater atmospheric warming having to do with water vapor amplification).  Thus if the satellite measurements were correct, we would expect to see a surface temperature trend of close to 0.22 °C per decade for the CONUS; instead, the Watts paper claims the trend is much lower at 0.155 °C per decade. 

This suggests that either the satellites are biased high, which is rather implausible (i.e., see Mears et al. 2011, which suggests they are biased low), or the Watts results are biased low.  The Watts paper tries to explain the discrepancy by claiming that the amplification factor over land ranges from 1.1 to 1.4 in various climate models, but does not provide a source to support this claim, which does not appear to be correct (this may be a reasonable range for global amplification factors, but not for land-only).

A discussion between Gavin Schmidt and Steve McIntyre on this subject led to the conclusion that the land-only amplification factor falls in the range of 0.78 to 1.23 (average over all global land areas), with a model mean close to 1 (using a script developed by McIntyre on 24 different models).  Note that McIntyre is a co-author of Watts et al., but has only helped with the statistical analysis and did not comment on the whole paper before Watts made it public. We suggest that he share his land-only amplification factor discussion with his co-authors.

Another important consideration is that the amplification factor also varies by latitude.  For example Vinnikov et al. (2005) found that at the CONUS latitude (approximately 40°, on average), models predict an amplification factor of approximately 1 (see their Figure 9).  Note that this is the amplification factor over both land and ocean at this latitude.  Since the amplification factor over land is less than that over the oceans, this suggests that the amplification factor over the CONUS land may even be less than 1. 

Combining the latitude and land-only status of the CONUS, the amplification factor may very well be less than 1, but a range of values significantly lower than the 1.1 to 1.4 range used in the Watts paper would be reasonable.

Note also that as discussed above, the satellite data (like all data) are imperfect and are not a 'gold standard'.  They are a useful tool for comparison in this study, but the satellite trends should not be assumed to be perfect measurements.

More Apples and Oranges

Watts et al. compare the best sited Class 1 and 2 stations (using their categorisation) to the totalhomogenised network. Strictly speaking, this is comparing apples and oranges; Watts' data are an inhomogeneous sub-sample of the network compared to a homogeneous total network. In practice, this methodological error doesn’t make much difference, since the homogenisation applied by NCDC produces uniform trends in all of the various classes.

However the use of a smaller network has disadvantages. When taking a gridded average of a sparse network, the impact of inhomogeneities is likely amplified and the overall uncertainty of variability and change in the timeseries increases.

The Class 1 & 2 sites used by Watts in this context represent just 20% of all the total CONUS network.  The comparison of the raw Class 1 & 2 sites with the same network of homogenised data in Watts' own Figure 18 indicates likely inhomogeneities in that raw data.  Watts et al. argue that the raw and adjusted Class 1 & 2 trends in Figures 18a and 18b are so different because "well sited stations are adjusted upward to match the already-adjusted poor stations," but this is simply not how the homogenization process is done.  In reality the difference is likely due to the  biases we have discussed above, indicating that the Watts raw data is inhomogeneous and influenced by these non-climate effects.

Determining whether or not the Class 1 & 2 raw data is homogeneous is therefore a key requirement of a revised manuscript.  And since the Class 1 & 2 sites have been selected for good exposure, Watts et al. would need to show the cause of any statistical discontinuities that they find. This work has already been done by NCDC in the Menne at al. papers, which show influences from the range of factors discussed above, and not just urban influence.

The Watts final conclusion that adjusted temperature trends are 'spuriously doubled' (0.155 °C vs. 0.309 °C per decade raw vs. adjusted data) relies on a simple assumption — that the raw data must be correct and the homogenised data incorrect. There is no a priori basis for this assumption and it is unsupported by the literature.

Adjustments Make Little Difference Globally

While Watts et al. identify possible issues concerning the adjustments applied to station temperature records, it wisely makes no attempt to assess the global impact of the adjustments, which are beyond the scope of the work. Nonetheless, this is a significant question from a public interest perspective.

In order to answer this question, we willl try and estimate the maximum possible impact of station adjustments on the instrumental temperature record.  To minimise the warming signal, we will use the simplest method for calculating a global temperature average -- the CRU method, which is known to yield poor coverage at high latitudes and hence underestimate recent warming.  Further, we'll assume that entirety of the data adjustments are wrong (ignoring proven bias corrections such as TOB).  If we calculate land temperature averages from both the raw and adjusted data, we can see how much difference the adjustments make. The result is shown in the figure below (red and green lines).

Just to be absolutely sure, we can do a further calculation using just rural unadjusted data (using the GHCN station classifications) -- the blue line.

While the adjustments do make a difference, the difference is small compared to the overall warming signal since 1979. Using a more sophisticated temperature calculation reduces this difference. Furthermore, we are only looking at land temperatures -- 30% of the planet. Including the remaining 70% of the planet (the oceans which, if not precisely rural, are certainly not urban!) dramatically reduces the remaining impact of the GHCN adjustments.  Indeed, comparison of warming trends over the oceans and over large inland lakes (including the North American Great Lakes) shows a high degree of consistency with terrestrial trends. Warming over the oceans and lakes is presumably not due to urbanisation.

The entire CRU-type calculation requires 65 lines of python code (by comparison, a modern airliner requires upwards of a million lines of code to fly).  The code is available below.
 Show code

Many others have done this comparison, including Caerbannog and Zeke Hausfather. Fawcett et al (2012) provide a comprehensive assessment of the sensitivity of Australian temperature trends to network and homogenisation choices, including comparison with an unhomogenised gridded analysis of Australian temperatures. Furthermore, the BEST project has obtained a similar result with a different, independent implementation of the station homogenization algorithm. It would be surprising is an independent approach were to yield a similar but incorrect result by chance.

Do the overall adjustments make a difference?  Yes.  Are they justified?  Yes, according to the body of scientific literature. Watts raises a scientific issue, but one which only affects part of the adjustment.  Does it matter? Not very much. Even if the entirety of the adjustments were wrong, we still see unprecedented warming over the past 40 years. And there is certainly not a factor of two difference between global warming trends in the raw and adjusted data.

Constructive Criticisms

It's worth noting that Peter Thorne of NCDC was interviewed by Andrew Revkin, and discussed three papers which NCDC has recently published (see here, here, here).  In the first of those linked papers, they actually concluded that there likely remains a residual cool bias in the adjusted data, and that the adjusted data are consistent with reanalysis data (detailed in the third linked paper).  Watts et al. do not address these papers.  Ironically, Watts responded to that interview by saying that Thorne needs to get out into the real world, but it is Watts et al. who have not accounted for real world effects like TOB, station movement, instrument changes, etc.

In its current form, the Watts paper contains little in the way of useful analysis.  There are too many potential sources of bias which are not accounted for, too many apples to oranges comparisons, and they cannot draw any conclusions about urban heat influences until their data are homogenized and other non-climate influences are removed.

The primary conclusion of the paper, aside from not being supported by the analysis, is simply implausible. The CONUS surface warming trend proposed by the Watts paper appears to be inconsistent with the satellite observations, and overall global trends in raw data do not differ dramatically from those in the adjusted data.  Comparing raw to adjusted data globally shows a rather small difference in long-term trends; far smaller than a factor of two.

The flaws we have identified entirely compromise the conclusions of the paper.  Ultimately Watts et al. assume that all adjustments are 'spurious' unless due to urban heat influences, when in fact most of their identified discrepancy likely boils down to important adjustments for instrumental changes, TOB, and other influences they have not accounted for in their analysis.  Watts et al. attempt to justify their assumption by asserting "well sited stations are adjusted upward to match the already-adjusted poor stations," but this is simply not how the homogenization process is done.

Fortunately McIntyre has acknowledged that TOB must be considered in their analysis, as has Watts, which is a good start, but they must also account for the other biases noted above in order to draw any valid conclusions about urban heat influences.

In conclusion, Watts et al. of course deserve the right to try to make their case in the peer-reviewed literature, however implausible that case appears to be. Therefore, we hope they will consider addressing the important concerns detailed above before they submit the paper to a journal.  Otherwise we suspect the paper will not fare well in the peer review process.  With said caveats carefully addressed and the conclusions amended if and where necessary, the paper has the potential to be a useful contribution to the climate science literature.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/watts_new_paper_critique.html

Joseph Romm: Wow. Just Wow. Desperate Deniers Sink to All-Time Low to Smear Uber-Vindicated Penn State Climate Scientist

Dear Readers,


What follows is so awful that I hesitated to put this on the blog, but the truth should be known about Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre and the people who applaud them and what they do, because they all have a sickness of mind that is difficult to look at.   What they did is so appalling that I really do not have the words to describe it.  I just sit here and mumble and shake my head, because it is so awful.


Tenney

Wow. Just Wow. Desperate Deniers Sink to All-Time Low to Smear Uber-Vindicated Penn State Climate Scientist

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, November 13, 2011

Climatologist Michael Mann works at Penn State.  Penn State is going through a horrific and inexcusable child-sex-abuse scandal.  Ergo…

Yes, two of the top climate science deniers on the web, Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit and Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat, actually went there.

Nobody should be shocked about Watts.  Last year, when a demented, violent individual, James Lee, held people hostage at gunpoint in Maryland, Watts wrote this amazing headline:

And the first line of his post was “Well, you filthy readers, see what happens when we don’t acquiesce?“ He has still never retracted this.  Watts is a guy who just a few weeks earlier had demanded that others on the web “dial back the rhetoric.”

But it was Steve McIntyre at ClimateAudit who launched this smear Thursday (click here if you have a strong stomach).  As long-time Climate Progress commenter MapleLeaf wrote at the long thread on this at DeepClimate:

No words can describe my anger at this uncalled for action by McIntyre who is knowingly trying to capitalize on (and benefit from) the suffering and pain of sexual assault victims. Absolutely disgusting in the extreme.

I can almost understand why McIntyre and Watts made such a desperate attack.  They’ve utterly lost the argument on the merits.

Watts’ entire denial career was based on finding gremlins in the land surface temperature record that would somehow show scientists had overestimated warming.  But it turns out that not only could no one else see the gremlins Watts claimed to find, but a Koch-funded analysis by skeptics that he himself was closely associated with found recent warming “on the high end” and speeding up.

McIntyre’s entire denial career was based on discrediting Mann and the work proving recent warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause (so the temperature history looks like a Hockey Stick).

But the Hockey Stick and Mann have been independently investigated and vindicated more times than any other facet of climate science or any other climate scientist (see links below).  As the journal Nature summed up the National Academy of Science’s National Research Council report on the Hockey Stick in 2006, “Academy affirms hockey-stick graph.”  Most recently, the NSF Inspector General concluded its investigation of Mann, “Finding no research misconduct or other matter raised by the various regulations and laws discussed above, this case is closed.”

So McIntyre and the deniers have nothing left whatsoever but the most over-the-top character assassination imaginable.  McIntyre’s case against Mann has become so weak that he actually cites an egregious (and retracted) blunder by someone else:

Clive Crook of the Atlantic Monthly mercilessly criticized [sic] Penn State for their fatuous findings that success in bringing revenue to the university and accolades from peers necessarily meant that misconduct was precluded:

The Penn State inquiry exonerating Michael Mann — the paleoclimatologist who came up with “the hockey stick” — would be difficult to parody. Three of four allegations are dismissed out of hand at the outset: the inquiry announces that, for “lack of credible evidence,” it will not even investigate them...

You think I exaggerate?

Yes, setting aside the wrong link, McIntyre seems completely unaware of the fact that Crook’s statement in boldface is false, I debunked it, and Crook retracted it!!!  Talk about “difficult to parody.”

As I explained here at the time:

Crook seems completely unaware that the inquiry he links to was a second investigation of Mann by Penn State.   The first three allegations were thoroughly examined and dismissed in Penn State’s first review of Mann.

Had Crook actually read the link he provides, he would know that since it clearly states that after  thoroughly reviewing all of the relevant material, “The Inquiry Committee determined there was no substance to this allegation and further investigation of this allegation was not warranted,” for each of the first three allegations.

I have no idea where Crook came up with the phrase he puts in quotes “lack of credible evidence”…

Crook’s original is here.  The “correction” is here.  For reasons that defy explanation, the Atlantic has left that erroneous post up even after Crook (lamely) retracted his mistakes (but not the conclusions that were based on those mistakes).

McIntyre should simply retract his entire piece and apologize.

Watts states, “Steve McIntyre writes about what many of us have been thinking about Penn State’s failures at investigating its own, such as the appearance of a whitewash investigation done about Dr. Michael Mann and Climategate.”

Really?  Many deniers have been thinking about this shameless and utterly nonsensical link?  Many deniers have been thinking about the claims that McIntyre makes about the Penn State investigation of Mann even though they were erroneous, debunked and previously retracted?

Well, I suppose Watts would know the state of denier “thinking.”  And to go by his commenters, he clearly does.

Recent Studies Vindicating the Hockey Stick:

1. Temperatures of North Atlantic “are unprecedented over the past 2000 years and are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming” — Science (2011)
2. GRL (2010):  “We conclude that the 20th century warming of the incoming intermediate North Atlantic water has had no equivalent during the last thousand years.“
3. JGR (2010):  “The last decades of the past millennium are characterized again by warm temperatures that seem to be unprecedented in the context of the last 1600 years.”
4. Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, “seminal” study finds (2009)
5. Unprecedented warming in Lake Tanganyika and its impact on humanity (2010)
6. Current Global Warming Is Unprecedented Compared to Climate of the Last 20,000 years, Study Finds (11/11)

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/13/367301/desperate-deniers-penn-state-climate-scientist/#comment-357293