Denialist Machine At Work

A short excerpt from Christopher Booker's Telegraph article on an important new paper re the the warming of Antarctica gives us a glimpse as to how such research gets treated by the Denialist movement:

One of the first to express astonishment was Dr Kenneth Trenberth, a senior scientist with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a convinced believer in global warming, who wryly observed 'it is hard to make data where none exists'. A disbelieving Ross Hayes, an atmospheric scientist who has often visited the Antarctic for Nasa, sent Professor Steig a caustic email ending: 'with statistics you can make numbers go to any conclusion you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community do this for media coverage.

1) Inflate the credentials of skeptics. Mr. Hayes appears to have visited the area exactly twice, within the past five years, though when he writes

...In the late 1980s helicopters were used to take our personnel to Williams Field from McMurdo Station due to the annual receding of the Ross Ice Shelf...

...it suggests a knowledge of the place extending back decades.

Furthermore, his brief email contains at least one demonstrably false claim:

One climate note to pass along is December 2006 was the coldest December ever for McMurdo Station.

Not so.

2) Inflate the differences among real scientists. While generally characterizing the new paper as "good work", what I think Kenneth Trenberth is objecting too is (from "Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year"):

...we use statistical climate-field-reconstruction techniques to obtain a 50-year-long, spatially complete estimate of monthly Antarctic temperature anomalies. In essence, we use the spatial covariance structure of the surface temperature field to guide interpolation of the sparse but reliable 50-year-long records of 2-m temperature from occupied weather stations. Although it has been suggested that such interpolation is unreliable owing to the distances involved1, large spatial scales are not inherently problematic if there is high spatial coherence, as is the case in continental Antarctica4.

Trenberth is one of those leery of this kind of statistical interpolation. The paper's authors think it works under the circumstances. A real, scientific exchange will perhaps ensue, and Booker will undoubtedly ignore it.

(Note: Trenberth expresses other objections, and the paper's authors answer as best they may, here.)

Anthony Watts Knows How To Pick 'Em

The world's greatest science blogger has found a Meteorologist straight outta Antarctica to "refute" the latest climate science research on that area of the planet (basically, the research indicates its warming just like everywhere else).

NASA weatherman Ross Hays argues that:

There are very few stations in Antarctica to begin with and only a hand full with 50 years of data. Satellite data is just approaching thirty years of available information. In my experience as a day to day forecaster that has to travel and do field work in Antarctica the summer seasons have been getting colder.

In other words, those damn climatologists are out there embracing their models instead of the facts on the ground, which on the contrary normal gawd-fearing data guys like Ross Hays have been embracing, apparently for "seasons". So we should really be listening to them rather than global warming hoaxers like Fat Al and the Lib-Left Scientific community.

Except that, thanks to Simon Evans, we know that Mr. Hays has talked about his time in the Antarctic on other occasions, in other forums. There is, for example, this post dated Dec. 3rd, 2008:

After 19 years with CNN and over 200 job applications I was given a job with the NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.

[...]

My new job is almost an adventure. I never though I would be going to Antarctica or the Arctic for that matter. Last year [2007 presumably] I spend the southern summer in Antarctica. This year I will be spending the holidays at home with the family in East Texas after spending six weeks in New Mexico. Next month I have to return to Esrange, Sweden for an international campaign studying the polar vortex. The days have only 56 minutes of daylight during early January with temperatures of -35 to freeze a beer on the window sill in 18 minutes. I will return to Esrange in the early summer, then next November it will be my turn to return to Antarctica.

How Mr. Hays justifies an assertion about the summer seasons in Antarctica based on what appears to be an experience of exactly one Antarctic summer season is beyond me. Perhaps Anthony can inquire.

Update: There is some possibility that Mr. Hays has spent two summers in the area, his first being in late 2005. Presumably the 2nd summer was colder than the first.