From	richardscourtney@aol.com	Date	Sun, 23 Nov 2003 18:42:59 EST
To	Tim Osborn, Myles Allen, russell.vose@noaa.gov
CC	Kevin Trenberth, timo.hameranta@pp.inet.fi, Thomas R Karl, ceforest@mit.edu, sokolov@mit.edu, phstone@mit.edu, ekalnay@atmos.umd.edu, richard.w.reynolds@noaa.gov, John Christy, Roy Spencer, benjie.norris@nsstc.uah.edu, kostya@atmos.umd.edu, norman.grody@noaa.gov, Thomas C Peterson, sfbtett@metoffice.com, penner, Dian J. Seidel, Kevin Trenberth, Tom Wigley, pielke@atmos.colostate.edu, climatesceptics@yahoogroups.com, aarking1@jhu.edu, bjorn@ps.au.dk, Chick Keller, c.defreitas@auckland.ac.nz, cidso@co2science.org, dwojick@shentel.net, David Douglass, dkaroly@ou.edu, mercurio@jafar.hartnell.cc.ca.us, fredev@mobilixnet.dk, seitz@rockvax.rockefeller.edu, heinz.hug@t-online.de, hughel@comcast.net, jahlbeck@abo.fi, jfriday@nas.edu, jeb@numberwatch.co.uk, daly@john-daly.com, kondratyev@kk10221.spb.edu, L.B. Klyashtorin, scriptec@aol.com, marsleroux@wanadoo.fr, visbeck@ldeo.columbia.edu, Mike MacCracken, Michael Schlesinger, n.polunin@ncl.ac.uk, pjm8x@wreck.evsc.virginia.edu, per.ericson@svd.se, P. Dietze, rabryson@facstaff.wisc.edu, lindzen@wind.mit.edu, S. Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Wibjörn Karlén, wsoon@cfa.harvard.edu, VINCENT GRAY, André Berger, andre@rice.edu, avogelmann@ucsd.edu, tonyb@essic.umd.edu, Bette Otto-Bliesner, cwunsch@mit.edu, schoenwiese@meteor.uni-frankfurt.de, ds533@columbia.edu, David Easterling, legates@udel.edu, wuebbles@atmos.uiuc.edu, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Fortunat Joos, kukla@ldeo.columbia.edu, gcb@ldeo.columbia.edu, Hans von Storch, igor@iarc.uaf.edu, James Hansen, jfbmitchell@metoffice.com, josefino.c.comiso@nasa.gov, Judith Lean, Keith Briffa, Ken Caldiera, klaus-p-heiss@msn.com, kump@geosc.psu.edu, Lonnie G. Thompson, jacobson@stanford.edu, claussen@pik-potsdam.de, Martin Manning, Martin Hoffert, mike.bergin@ce.gatech.edu, mauel@columbia.edu, glantz@ucar.edu, Michael Oppenheimer, rodolfo@dge.inpe.br, olavi@aai.ee, ocanz@ciudad.com.ar, air@mpch-mainz.mpg.de, pdoran@uic.edu, Phil Jones, tpatters@ccs.carleton.ca, rmyneni@crsa.bu.edu, Rasmus Benestad, ray bradley, anthes@ucar.edu, robert.sausen@dlr.de, Stephen Schneider, wofsy@fas.harvard.edu, smenon@giss.nasa.gov, Susan Solomon, Tim Barnett, ulrich.berner@bgr.de, Ulrich Cubasch, uli.neff@iup.uni-heidelberg.de, vramanathan@ucsd.edu, vr@gfdl.noaa.gov, broecker@ldeo.columbia.edu
Subject	Re: Workshop: Reconciling Vertical Temperature Trends
Dear All: The excuses seem to be becoming desperate. Unjustified assertion that I fail to understand "Myles' comments and/or work on trying the detect/attribute climate change" does not stop the attribution study being an error. The problem is that I do understand what is being done, and I am willing to say why it is GIGO. Tim Allen said; In a message dated 19/11/03 08:47:16 GMT Standard Time, m.allen1@physics.ox.ac.uk writes: I would just like to add that those of us working on climate change detection and attribution are careful to mask model simulations in the same way that the observations have been sampled, so these well-known dependencies of nominal trends on the trend-estimation technique have no bearing on formal detection and attribution results as quoted, for example, in the IPCC TAR. I rejected this saying: At 09:31 21/11/2003, RichardSCourtney@aol.com wrote: >It cannot be known that the 'masking' does not generate additional >spurious trends. Anyway, why assume the errors in the data sets are >geographical and not?. The masking is a 'fix' applied to the model >simulations to adjust them to fit the surface data known to contain >spurious trends. This is simple GIGO. Now, Tim Osborn says of my comment; In a message dated 21/11/03 10:04:56 GMT Standard Time, t.osborn@uea.ac.uk writes: Richard's statement makes it clear, to me at least, that he misunderstands Myles' comments and/or work on trying the detect/attribute climate change. As far as I understand it, the masking is applied to the model to remove those locations/times when there are no observations. This is quite different to removing those locations which do not match, in some way, with the observations - that would clearly be the wrong thing to do. To mask those that have no observations, however, is clearly the right thing to do - what is the point of attempting to detect a simulated signal of climate change over some part of (e.g.) the Southern Ocean if there are no observations there in which to detect the expected signal? That would clearly be pointless. Yes it would. And I fully understand Myles' comments. Indeed, my comments clearly and unarguably relate to Myles comments. But, as my response states, Myles' comments do not alter the fact that the masked data and the unmasked data contain demonstrated false trends. And the masking may introduce other spurious trends. So, the conducted attribution study is pointless because it is GIGO. Ad hominem insults don't change that. And nor does the use of peer review to block my publication of the facts of these matters. Richard