Wood Romances

You'll frequently see contrarian influencers on social media showing the differences between "raw" and "adjusted" temperatures for the United States that indicate that CONUS warming in the "adjusted" temperatures is greater than in the "raw" data. We're often told this indicates that scientists have adjusted CONUS temperatures to make them cooler in the past, thus making the amount of warming that has occurred in the US larger in the "adjusted" temperature data than in the "raw" data. It's then frequently just assumed that this is because "liberal" scientists need are conspiring with nefarious intent to tamper with and manipulate temperature data to create artificial warming trends in US temperatures. In another post I share some dishonest way in which contrarians exaggerate the difference between the "raw" and adjusted temperatures, but even in properly plotted comparisons, the final "adju...

In another post , I covered some of the many reasons why scientists have concluded that urbanization biases are not responsible for any significant fraction of global warming. In order to avoid too much duplication with that post, I'll only briefly summarize the reasons: Homogenization Corrects Urbanization Bias. While cities are warmer than rural areas, they warm at about the same rate as rural areas. The bias is caused by urbanization. That is, as rural areas become more urban, they will warm at a faster rate than rural and urban areas. This bias is effectively removed by homogenization. Very Rural Stations Warm at Least as Rapidly as All Stations. Wickham et al 2013 compared the most rural land stations globally and compared them to all land stations. The study found that "very rural" stations were warming at least as rapidly as all stations. If urbanization biases were making a significant contribution to global warming, then the most rural stations would warm more sl...

Patrick Brown recently published a blogpost in which he suggested that in order to get published in highly prestigious journals, you have to follow a "not-so secret" formula. Another version of this shows up in the Free Press . According to Brown, "the formula is more about shaping your research in specific ways to support pre-approved narratives than it is about generating useful knowledge for society." Now I want to be clear about a few things before I get into this. First, it appears he's not attacking peer-reviewed journals in general or even highly respected journals a tier below the top echelon of Nature and Science . It also doesn't appear that he thinks these journals are forcing a narrative that isn't true; only that they are preferentially selecting the negative aspects of AGW over others factors, and science would benefit if these journals published more useful and comprehensive analyses. And he also seems to acknowledge that the kinds of mo...