The International Temperature Data Review Project
tempdatareview.org
tempdatareview.org
In that spirit, I applaud this project, and I look forward to scientific publications upholding such standards.
In the U.S., Anthony Watts sponsored a project for people to send in pictures of poorly sited weather stations. That started in 2007 and they collected and reviewd hundreds of reports. The ultimate outcome was that they did not find any significant difference in mean temperature trend between stations.
Richard Muller reviewed the surface temperature data and also found it to be reliable and useful, with no signs of manipulation or obvious error. In his own words:
> Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-...
Why would this organization re-tread old ground? Because most people don't follow the subject very closely, so the same doubts can be reinforced in the society over and over and over again, for political (not scientific) purposes.
[1] http://www.surfacestations.org/Fall_etal_2011/fall_etal_medi...
Well, as the paper explicitly states, it does not. Mean warming trend at the stations they reviewed is the same as for the national network overall. They found differences in volatility (min/max extremes), which is interesting, but does not disprove the overall warming trend--which was Watt's expectation from the beginning.
Scientists make statistical adjustments to the raw data in an attempt to eliminate or mitigate sources of bias, including siting effects like Watts is concerned with.
Watt sought to show that siting bias effects were too significant to mitigate, or were not properly mitigated, thereby calling into question the reliability of the surface temp data sets that show warming. Instead, the data he collected showed that actually, even poorly sited stations show a very similar warming trend.
Since attacking the validity of the station data itself did not provide fodder for the political campaign, this project seeks to generate vague doubts about the statistical adjustments.
The agenda is plainly clear when you consider that they bothered to embed a graph from NOAA, but somehow failed to link to the NOAA writeups that discuss--and in some cases provide source code for--the very adjustments they are wondering about.
Version 1 (source of the graph): http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.htm...
Version 2: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/
[1]http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Warming_Policy_F...
Nevertheless, the scientific principles at stake are correct. The character and past of people funding a scientific data review are irrelevant for the outcome of science.
All scientists on the planet look at the list of authors on any papers they read. That way they know the biases of the authors, the types of assumptions they might make, and how trustworthy any data is.
No timetable has been set for the panel to report.
No great surprise. They probably don't want to have the same embarrassment as Koch's funding of the Berkeley temperature study.
I wait to be pleasantly surprised, but if this research goes against what Lawson wants to see, I very much doubt he would agree with it.
If it goes against what I would expect, I would be interested. I would love for global warming to be a myth. The more I look into it, the more it seems to be pretty solid though.
edit - something I find funny is that between them, Lawson and Thatcher are two the UK's most effective environmentalists, given they oversaw the dismantling of the UK coal industry. With the result that much of the UK left wing believes in some romantic sense that the UK should be digging up coal still, just so long as we don't burn the stuff.
edit2 - oh, the panel is chaired by Terence Kealey. The man who has made himself infamous by being against the government funding any science research or providing any state schooling, is heading a science project funded by a voting member of the House of Lords and former government chancellor.
>In order to try to provide some clarity on the scientific issues, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has invited a panel of experts to investigate and report on these controversies.
Maybe it's just me, but I read these combined not as "Let's do a proper review of the methodology", but as "it seems that you are all dense, so we are assembling a panel to explain it to you in small words without reviewing the accepted wisdom on the matter".
That would be a shame. I think that people are slinging science fast and shallow on both sides of the debate, partly because people tend to internalize their opinion as a pillar of their identity (see: The Greens party in most western nations), and partly because there are financial interests betting on both sides of the debate, and they are all providing generous "research support".
A proper review of this significant point is very important, and it sounds like it's off to a biased start.