Where did Anthony Watts go wrong here?

I'd say the obvious biggest blunder was that he didn't normalize the different datasets. Each has its own baseline, the satellites obviously having a later baseline since they only started collecting data in 1979. So since the GISS baseline is 1951-1980, when temperatures were cooler, obviously the temperature *anomalies* (difference from the baseline) are higher.

So Watts' "warmer vs. colder" is utterly meaningless, because he's just showing that the baseline temperature used by GISS and Hadley are lower than the baseline temperature used by the satellites.

It's an error a high school kid should have been able to avoid making. Really obvious, but when you're predisposed to finding an error in the surface data, your ability to do an unbiased analysis goes out the window. This is the kind of thing which shows how worthless Watts' blog is. Terrible and totally biased analyses.

In fact, this is a perfect example of where deniers go wrong - they start out with the conclusion they want to be true, then try to find evidence to support it. In Watts' case, the conclusion is that the surface temperature record is biased high. So he does this exceedingly simple analysis, sees the conclusion he wants to see, and doesn't go any further. If he didn't start out biased in favor of that conclusion, he would have thought "okay now why are the surface station histograms hotter?". But no, it fit his predetermined conclusion that they're biased, so he stopped there, justifying his incorrect predetermined conclusion.

Same thing with deniers - they start off concluding AGW must be somehow wrong and look for reasons to support that belief. That's why all deniers have a different reason for rejecting AGW. And it's why the few deniers who actually examine scientific studies look almost exclusively at the few 'skeptic' studies and bristle when you try to explain the errors in these studies.

Like Watts, they only want to see the evidence which they think supports their predetermined conclusion. And so like Watts, they constantly make very basic errors.

*edit* BB says Watts isn't finished. This blog entry is from a year and a half ago! Again, BB needs Watts to be right, so he justifies this belief with a totally ridiculous statement.

Hard to say do you mean the first graph that clearly shows the temperature rising between 1979 and 2008 (clearly someone who really was interested in science might look at this again in light of the temperature data for 2009 being back up to 2004 levels, but Watts wont as science has never been his goal)

Or his second graph that try's to show how cold 2008 was but has to limit the data because it might show 2001 was cooler and that would ruin his attempt to claim it getting colder or do you mean the third smoothed graph that again shows the warming trend over time.

Watts makes so many mistakes it's hard to tell and I can't really be bothered looking further there are probably more.

Although I did notice the ad for Energy & Environment the deniers pet journal, if it is trying to pretend to be a real journal it's sort of shooting itself in the foot to be advertised in a well known denier blog like watts.

I checked the article and noted that Watts is not finished with his analysis. I think I'll wait until then before I respond as to any error in judgement. I believe that the process of open discussion is a good one. We need more of it.

http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:hp6HxLk2ljkJ:...

On your website, read "Over on Climate Audit, there’s been quite a bit of discussion about the global representivity of the GISS data-set due to all of the adjustments that seem to have been applied to the data at locations that don’t seem to need any adjustments to compensate for things like urban heat islands"

Watts is a self debunking blunderer.

Dunno why the denial community takes him seriously.

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