Steve McIntyre: Difference between revisions

Browse history interactively ← Previous edit Next edit →Content deleted Content addedVisual WikitextInline

Revision as of 22:04, 5 February 2009 editNathan Johnson (talk \| contribs)Autopatrolled, Pending changes reviewers12,381 edits merge content from Climate Audit ← Previous edit		Revision as of 22:06, 5 February 2009 edit undoNathan Johnson (talk \| contribs)Autopatrolled, Pending changes reviewers12,381 edits cleanup mergeNext edit →
Line 27:		Line 27:
	== ClimateAudit.org ==		== ClimateAudit.org ==
	McIntyre's blog has as a recurrent topic the struggle to obtain underlying data from peer reviewed papers. McIntyre has stated that he started Climate Audit so that he could defend himself against attacks being made at ], a blog on climatology.<ref>{{cite web \| url=http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=592#comment-18326 \| title=Blog comment \| author=Stephen McIntyre \| publisher=Climate Audit \| date=] ] \| accessdate=2007-09-01}}</ref> An earlier website, , provided additional information for M&M's papers, including raw data and source code.		McIntyre's blog has as a recurrent topic the struggle to obtain underlying data from peer reviewed papers. McIntyre has stated that he started Climate Audit so that he could defend himself against attacks being made at ], a blog on climatology.<ref>{{cite web \| url=http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=592#comment-18326 \| title=Blog comment \| author=Stephen McIntyre \| publisher=Climate Audit \| date=] ] \| accessdate=2007-09-01}}</ref> An earlier website, , provided additional information for M&M's papers, including raw data and source code.

⚫	Climate Audit tied with ] for Best Science Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards.<ref>
⚫	[http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog-1.php Best Science Blog - The 2007 Weblog Awards</ref>

	'''Climate Audit''' is a ] run by ] devoted to auditing the statistical methods and data used in ] of past climate, especially ] reconstructions such as the 1998 reconstruction by Mann, Bradley and Hughes ("MBH98"), which was prominently featured in the 2001 ].

	===Inspiration===		===Inspiration===
Line 45:		Line 40:
	<blockquote>y original interest in GISS adjustment procedures was not an abstract interest, but a specific interest in whether GISS adjustment procedures were equal to the challenge of “fixing” bad data. If one views the above assessment as a type of limited software audit (limited by lack of access to source code and operating manuals), one can say firmly that the GISS software had not only failed to pick up and correct fictitious steps of up to 1 deg C, but that GISS actually introduced this error in the course of their programming. According to any reasonable audit standards, one would conclude that the GISS software had failed this particular test. While GISS can (and has) patched the particular error that I reported to them, their patching hardly proves the merit of the GISS (and USHCN <ref>United States Historical Climate Network </ref>) adjustment procedures. These need to be carefully examined.</blockquote>		<blockquote>y original interest in GISS adjustment procedures was not an abstract interest, but a specific interest in whether GISS adjustment procedures were equal to the challenge of “fixing” bad data. If one views the above assessment as a type of limited software audit (limited by lack of access to source code and operating manuals), one can say firmly that the GISS software had not only failed to pick up and correct fictitious steps of up to 1 deg C, but that GISS actually introduced this error in the course of their programming. According to any reasonable audit standards, one would conclude that the GISS software had failed this particular test. While GISS can (and has) patched the particular error that I reported to them, their patching hardly proves the merit of the GISS (and USHCN <ref>United States Historical Climate Network </ref>) adjustment procedures. These need to be carefully examined.</blockquote>

		⚫	Climate Audit tied with ] for Best Science Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards.<ref>
	==See also==
		⚫	[http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog-1.php Best Science Blog - The 2007 Weblog Awards</ref>
	*]
	*]

	== References ==
	{{Reflist\|3}}

	==External links==
	*
	*
	*], for new or occasional Climate Audit readers.


	]
	]
	]

	== Personal ==		== Personal ==

Revision as of 22:06, 5 February 2009

Stephen McIntyre is the primary author of Climate Audit, a blog devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data. He is most prominent as a critic of the temperature record of the past 1000 years, particularly the work of Michael E. Mann, and the data quality of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Career

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Toronto. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford.

McIntyre has worked in hard-rock mineral exploration for 30 years, much of that time as an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies. He has also been a policy analyst at both the governments of Ontario and of Canada. He was the president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. When Northwest Explorations Inc. was taken over in 1998 by CGX Resources Inc. to form the oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy Inc., McIntyre ceased being a director. McIntyre was a strategic advisor for CGX in 2000 through 2003.

Prior to 2003 he was an officer or director of several small public mineral exploration companies.

The Hockey stick controversy

Main article: Hockey stick controversy

With Ross McKitrick, McIntyre has been involved in questioning the validity of the "hockey stick" graph used in a journal article by Michael E. Mann and co-authors.

Contributions to the temperature record

McIntyre has supported the efforts of Anthony Watts and SurfaceStations.org to document the quality of weather stations. McIntyre was investigating the ability of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) software to fix data problems due to poor quality stations.

While studying individual station histories, McIntyre found an anomaly in the US surface temperature anomaly record kept by GISS. GISS investigated, found an error and incorporated a correction in their data set within 2 days. The error affects the US surface temperature anomaly record, which for years 2000-2006 reduces the temperature anomaly by about 0.15°C. It made no perceptible difference to the global mean anomaly, nor to the rankings of the globally warmest years.

A few days later, McIntyre wrote:

Closing the circle: my original interest in GISS adjustment procedures was not an abstract interest, but a specific interest in whether GISS adjustment procedures were equal to the challenge of “fixing” bad data. If one views the above assessment as a type of limited software audit (limited by lack of access to source code and operating manuals), one can say firmly that the GISS software had not only failed to pick up and correct fictitious steps of up to 1 deg C, but that GISS actually introduced this error in the course of their programming.

In the same article, McIntyre expressed his hope that the acknowledgment of this error would lead the GISS to allow researchers access to the source code and methodologies GISS uses to construct its U.S. and global temperature anomalies. Both methodologies and source code are now available on the GISS website.

see Instrumental temperature record#Calculating the global temperature

ClimateAudit.org

McIntyre's blog has as a recurrent topic the struggle to obtain underlying data from peer reviewed papers. McIntyre has stated that he started Climate Audit so that he could defend himself against attacks being made at RealClimate, a blog on climatology. An earlier website, www.climate2003.com, provided additional information for M&M's papers, including raw data and source code.

Inspiration

McIntyre became interested in these issues after advocates of the Kyoto Protocol used the Hockey Stick graph from MBH98 in ways that he found similar to Bre-X and other stock frauds, leading him to try to audit the MBH98 data and analysis. He launched the blog in January 2005 just before Geophysical Research Letters published a paper by McIntyre and Ross McKitrick critiquing MBH98. The blog is largely concerned with McIntyre's efforts to audit current climate publications. It supports comments, but topics not related to auditing results in climate science are generally discouraged.

Auditing

The ClimateAudit blog was credited with spurring two hearings on the Hockey Stick Graph, open documentation and the reliability of peer review in government-funded science research by the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee in 2006 at which Stephen McIntyre testified. Of the role of the Climate Audit blog in inspiring the hearings, the Prometheus blog of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research of the University of Colorado at Boulder said, referring to ClimateAudit, " also have provided a case study in the power of blogs in today's worlds of science and politics". Climate Audit has been highlighted by the press including The Wall Street Journal and United Press International, and was co-winner of the 2007 Best Science Blog award.

In 2007, McIntyre started auditing the various corrections made to temperature records, in particular those relating to the Urban Heat Island effect. In the course of his analysis of the records for individual sites, he discovered a small discontinuity in some US records in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) dataset starting in January 2000. He emailed GISS advising them of the problem and within a couple of days GISS issued a new, corrected set of data and "thank Stephen McIntyre for bringing to our attention that such an adjustment is necessary to prevent creating an artificial jump in year 2000". The adjustment caused the average temperatures for the continental United States to be reduced about 0.15 °C during the years 2000-2006. Changes in other portions of the record did not exceed 0.03 °C, and it made no discernible difference to the global mean anomalies.

McIntyre later commented:

y original interest in GISS adjustment procedures was not an abstract interest, but a specific interest in whether GISS adjustment procedures were equal to the challenge of “fixing” bad data. If one views the above assessment as a type of limited software audit (limited by lack of access to source code and operating manuals), one can say firmly that the GISS software had not only failed to pick up and correct fictitious steps of up to 1 deg C, but that GISS actually introduced this error in the course of their programming. According to any reasonable audit standards, one would conclude that the GISS software had failed this particular test. While GISS can (and has) patched the particular error that I reported to them, their patching hardly proves the merit of the GISS (and USHCN ) adjustment procedures. These need to be carefully examined.

Climate Audit tied with Bad Astronomy for Best Science Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards.