Sunspots and a possible new ice age (updated)

American Thinker ^ | April 22, 2008 | Thomas Lifson

[TheLion]

Amazing how 2012 keeps popping up in everything.

Gore and his buddies are going to be praying for a little global warming if we slide into an ice age.

[jwalsh07]

Steve McIntyre.

[cogitator]

Can you tell me the name of the thread it’s in? (On ClimateAudit)

[jwalsh07]

Click on the link Cog! :-}

[cogitator]

Sorry, didn't realize it was a link.

Quoth McIntyre: "There is a substantial difference in trends in the “raw” data, which should have been reported."

Raw data usually has errors in it. That's why you don't use it to say anything definitive, because if you use uncorrected, unadjusted, un-QA/QC-ed data, hardly anything you say about it is scientifically defensible. So Peterson, who has been working with this data for decades, is unlikely to do something so unscientific.

While some of what McIntyre has done has merit, here I think he's pontificating beyond his realm.

[jwalsh07]

"Readers should note that Peterson does not carry out TOB adjustments based on documented changes in observation time (which USHCN users might assume). Instead Peterson has used a procedure attributed to DeGaetano BAMS 2000, which purports to estimate observation time based on the properties of the data itself. The DeGaetano procedure, as with so many of these recipes, is not a statistical procedure known to statistical civilization off the island. You can’t go to a statistics textbook and learn its properties. There is no systematic presentation of DeGaetano-adjusted TOBS series against USHCN adjusted series."

I really don't know how any fair reading here eleicits the response you gave. Peterson used this data to assert that there is no UHI. You assert that he is entitled to that claim based on the data that contradicts his assertion after he massages it with a non-statistical procedure. Not inspiring confidence in either assertion Cog.

[cogitator]

Peterson used this data to assert that there is no UHI.

The NCDC GHCN data includes a UHI correction. So how could Peterson assert there is no UHI?