Over at Anthony Watt’s excellent blog about climate and global warming – Watt’s Up With That? – we see Peter Sinclair get absolutely schooled for his dishonest and ignorant attempt to substantiate anthropogenic global warming. Who is Peter Sinclair? He’s a radical environut who puts out a (usually) weekly series of YouTube video documentaries entitled “ Climate Crock of the Week” in which he attempts to “debunk” the science that disproves global warming. Generally, while we can give Mr. Sinclair an “A” for effort, his “refutations” amount to little more than handwaving with a little ad hominem thrown in as filler. This should not surprise us, since Mr. Sinclair is not a scientist. In fact, he is an “independent film producer” whose only claim to anything even remotely resembling a relevant background in this field is that he apparently sat in on one of Al Gore’s Climate Project seminars. This didn’t stop him from trying to attack the temperature tracking station work done by Watt (an accredited meteorologist), making a thorough hash of the attempt while he was at it. Watt takes him apart,
….Sitting down Saturday night, to watch the video again, detecting through its exquisite subtleties and nuance, I couldn’t help but laugh, because once again I noticed that everything reported in it was just wrong.
In fact, it probably was the worst job of fact-finding I had ever seen, which as WUWT readers know, is a bold assessment. I’ve been involved in broadcast TV news for 25 years, and have seen some really bad work from greenhorns fresh out of reporters school. This video reminded me of those. It was as if whoever put it together had never researched it, but just strung together a bunch of graphics, video, photos, and a monotone voice-over track with ad hominems liberally sprinkled for seasoning. I figured it was probably just an overzealous college student out to save the world and this was some college project. It had that air of radical burningman quality about it.
Curiosity piqued, I inquired into just who is this climate Solon? To my surprise, he turned out to be an “independent film producer” working out of his house in Midland, MI under the name “Greenman Studio”, one Peter Sinclair, a proud graduate of Al Gore’s Climate Camp. I still figured him to be a kid and imagined his mom was yelling down into the basement “Peter that’s too loud, turn it down!”
[snip]
….OK. But if Mr. Sinclair had contacted me (like a journalist would) before he made his video, instead of simply reading the NCDC Talking points memo (revised version seen here, PDF) he could have found out a few things, such as:
NCDC used an old outdated version of my data set (April 2008) they found on my website and assumed it was “current”. Big mistake on their part. Big admission of not overly concerning himself with first-hand knowledge, or even substance, on his part.
NCDC did not contact me about use of the data. The data, BTW is not yet public domain, though I plan to make it so after I’ve published my paper. So like Mr. Sinclair, technically they are also in violation of copyright. Surfacestations is a private project, I emphasize, what with the public-private concept being one of the major precipitors of the alarmosphere’s angst.
That data NCDC found had not been quality controlled, many of the ratings changed after quality control was applied, thus changing the outcome.
When notified of this, they did nothing to deal with the issue, such as notifying readers.
NCDC published no methodology, data or formula used, or show work of any kind that would normally be required in a scientific paper.
The author is missing from the document thus it was published anonymously. Apparently nobody at NCDC would put his or her name on it.
When notified of the fact that the author’s name Thomas C. Peterson (of NCDC) was embedded in the properties of the PDF document (which happens on registration of the Adobe Acrobat program, causing insertion in all output), NCDC’s only response was to remove the author’s name from the document and place it back online. It is odd behavior for a scientist to publish work but not put your name on it.
NCDC got the number of USHCN stations wrong in their original document document graph, citing 1228 when it is actually 1218 I notified them of this and they eventually fixed it.
That NCDC original document did not even cite my published work, or even use my name to credit me. I have the original which you can view here Note also the name in the document properties and the number of USHCN2 stations above the graph.
I’m regularly lambasted for publishing things here that are not “peer reviewed”. But, when NCDC does it, and does it unbelievably badly, not only is the “talking points memo” embraced by the alarmosphere as “truth” and “falsification”, but NOT ONE of those embracing it show the remotest interest in questioning why it fails to meet even the basic standards for a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.
Please read the whole thing, it’s long, but quite revealing about the standards and ethics of the environmental wacko side of the blogosphere and the outfits they rely upon to get their information – shoddy and dishonest use of data, copyright infringement, refusal to actually address pushback from the other side, the whole enchilada. What’s sad is that Peter Sinclair’s “Climate Crock” series has become something of a gold standard for the Church of Global Warming on the internet, if the number of blogs and other links to it from pro-global warming outfits is any indication. So, how seriously can we really take the pro-global warming bloggers and “journalists,” when they rely on such subpar material to support their mythology? I mean, seriously, meteorologist vs. “independent film producer.” For the logical and rational person, the choice isn’t hard.
Is it any wonder that real scientists are abandoning the AGW mythology in droves? Even though the Al Gore epic cycle makes for an entertaining story, it’s simply no substitute for reality.
Tags: Global Warming, Science
