The notion that this is a propaganda site is offensive.

I’m an interested layperson. I try to report on the science, and like anyone in that position, I try to get information from reliable sources. Of necessity I make judgements about these. Of course I’m interested in peer-reviewed papers.

In the course of this thread, I’ve seen reference to temperature series by GISS, by the NOAA, by CRU and the Brits. I’d be astonished if the Germans and the French didn’t do their own thing also. All of them would need to make some adjustments to the data, including for urban heat islands, and I’m sure they all do their best.

If you want to have a scientific stoush, the RealClimate thread with 541 comments already is still open. So are both threads at Deltoid. This thread is closed.

but it’s truly unlikely that after another 300 comments much will have been achieved

Exactly, and once they start ranting about urban heat islands and temperature proxies you know its time to stop giving them oxygen. They’ll get bored after a while and crawl back to timblair.net or ClimateAudit and their rich fantasy world.

It seems you have produced a text-book example of the ‘motive fallacy’.

There is a ‘denialist industry’ as you put it, operating from a position of self-interest, working to discredit the science of climate change. But just because they have their own motives for wishing to debunk the science, does that make their work any less correct if and whenever they happen to achieve what they set out to do?

Even in this post you have demonstrated a lack of interest in the science, choosing instead to base your response around philosophical writings by the likes of Monbiot, Hamilton and Pearce.

It is like this from over on RC.

Why surfacestations.org is bad for this site:
Hansen says in Hansen et al, (2001)
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf

The GISS urban adjustment is dependent upon the accuracy of the temperature records of the unlit stations, so if the station history records and homogeneity adjustments for these stations are inaccurate or incomplete, this could alter the inferred urban warming.

Well, now we have proof that Hansenâ??s lights=0 methodology does not work without actually checking the stations for asphalt, concrete, air conditioners, etc.

[Response: â??couldâ?? != â??doesâ??. The latter requires a demonstration that the microsite issues actually add up to something. That has not been demonstrated in the slightest. - gavin]

Comment by Vernon â?? 20 August 2007

It appears that alarmist do not want to follow the scientific method. If you do not get what is wrong with what gavin said, I will explain it. Basically, he is saying that just because Hansen states that his study, the one that is used as the basis for the UHI off-set, states that it only works if the data is accurate does not mean that now that we know that there are issues that the alarmist have to find out if they were right. It is up to others to redo the work and find out what the real answer is and till then, we will ignore any problems with the data.

Here, Clive Hamilton’s Scorcher also has a chapter on the denialists (I haven’t yet read it) but he goes into the Lavoisier Group in Australia, set up by someone working for the CEO of a major mining company, among other things.

From Hamilton (p128):

Foremost among the fake citizens’ groups was The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). According to secret documents, it was to be ‘a national coalition intended to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers of “junk science” … Upon formation of Coalition, key leaders will begin outreach, eg. editorial board tours, opinion articles, and brief elected officials in selected states’.

From Monbiot about TASSC (p32):

It was important, further letters stated, ‘to ensure that TASSC has a diverse group of ‘contributers’; to ‘link the tobacco industry with other more “politically correct” products’; and to associate scientific studies which cast smoking in a bad light with ‘broader questions about government research and regulations’, such as

• Global warming
• Nuclear waste disposal
• Biotechnology

The author of this strategy was APCO a PR firm engaged by Philip Morris. One of the ‘contributers’ of course was EXXON.

Hamiton as well as Guy Pearce in his book High and Dry go into the ‘greenhouse mafia’ in Australia and other organised efforts to debunk climate change.

“The UHI has relevance for the study of regional and global climates that rely on accurate assessments of climate. The global network of stations is unevenly distributed; most are located in the developed world, over land, and near urban areas. As settlements have grown in extent, stations located nearby may have been affected. Thus, the urban temperature ’effect’ needs to be removed so that global trends can be examined.”