New Study Crushes Global Warming Data Claims

Global warming skeptic and meteorologist Anthony Watts, whose wattsupwiththat.com website has been called the “world’s most viewed climate website,” released a scientific discussion paper yesterday that crushes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s [NOAA’s] “global warming” data claims. The study, co-authored with Dr. John R. Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Stephen McIntyre of Toronto, Canada, and Evan Jones of New York, concluded that “reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward.”

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News this morning, co-author Dr. John R. Christy, an internationally recognized climate change expert, explained the significance of the findings:

In 2010, the World Meteorological Organization adopted a new standard for temperature collection stations. This discussion paper is the first to apply that standard. The finding is that when the new class scheme was applied to weather stations, the stations considered compliant had cooler trends than non-compliant stations.

In a press release issued from his offices in Chico, California yesterday, lead researcher Anthony Watts explained the significance of the new standards and the resultant findings of the study:

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recent WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends…

Today, a new paper has been released that is the culmination of knowledge gleaned from five years of work by Anthony Watts and the many volunteers and contributors to the SurfaceStations project started in 2007.

This prepublication draft paper, titled An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends...is to be submitted for publication [in an academic journal]. . . 

Using Leroy 2010 methods, [this paper] concludes that these factors, combined with station siting issues, have led to a spurious doubling of U.S. mean temperature trends in the 30 year data period covered by the study from 1979-2008. (emphasis added)

Co-author Christy explained that the decision by lead researcher Anthony Watts to release the discussion paper for public review was an innovation in academic research, pioneered, ironically, by global warming “converted skeptic” Richard Muller:

Releasing this as a discussion paper is like a pre-vetting process. If legitimate things are found, corrections will be made prior to submission to a peer reviewed academic publication. Richard Muller is the only one who has done this before. For me it’s an experiment. So far, it’s a wild ride. If you look on the blogs you’ll see there are already hundreds of comments. We’re looking through those comments. 

The bits of responses I’ve gotten from academic types so far are mainly curiosity because this is a whole new world. Responses are all over the map. Some have thought it’s been strange. For me, it is a way you can find errors quickly.

Christy added that when and where the study will be submitted for peer reviewed academic journal publication will be determined by lead researcher Anthony Watts:

“That’s up to Anthony Watts. He’s the lead researcher. I imagine he’ll look at publications such as Science, the Journal of Geophysical Research, and the Journal of Climate. What you’re seeing here is the evolution of the academic publication process with this kind of [public release of a discussion paper].”

In yesterday’s press release Watts acknowledged that “the pre-release of this paper follows the practice embraced by Dr. Richard Muller, of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project.” Watts quoted Muller’s 2011 Scientific American interview, where he described the practice:

I know that is prior to acceptance, but in the tradition that I grew up in (under Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez) we always widely distributed “preprints” of papers prior to their publication or even submission. That guaranteed a much wider peer review than we obtained from mere referees.

Look for the mainstream media to give this new study by Watts and his colleagues a very cool reception. 

Michael Patrick Leahy is a Breitbart News contributor, Editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series, and author of  Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.