SIGNIFICANT economic interventions are being planned, that are going to impact on citizens all around the world, based on the premise that global temperatures are increasing. It would thus seem especially important that quality temperature data, the data underpinning the policy, be publicly available.
In fact there are several official temperature data sets and what is publicly available has all been adjusted. Adjustments are made for all sorts of reasons and often multiple times. The number of data bases and the extent of the data manipulation intrigues many amateur and professional statisticians who take an interest in climate change.
Recently statistician and blogger Steve McIntyre was denied access to specific data files at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. This Institution holds the longest official records for global temperatures as measured by thermometers. His request was refused on the basis he is not an academic – presumably meaning he is not currently employed by a University. He is a qualified statistician with an impressive career in private industry and various publications. Anyway, one of his colleagues, who does hold a university position, Ross McKitrick subsequently requested the same data and this request was also rejected, but for different reasons.
According to a recent news item in the academic journal Nature, the refusal is because Phil Jones, the director of the Climate Research Unit, is being inundated with requests. A figure of 56 requests is quoted in the article. This doesn’t seem a lot to me. Furthermore, I don’t understand why the director of the institution would be involved in the processing of such requests. Surely there is an army of technicians who can process such requests particularly given the request is for the raw unadjusted data.
Mr McIntyre and others are claiming Dr Jones is hiding something – and the longer he withholds the data the more scandalous it will appear.
************************
Notes and Links
Climate data spat intensifies, Growing demands for access to information swamp scientist, by Olive Heffernan, August 12, 2009. Nature 460, 787 (2009) | doi:10.1038/460787a News
The CRU Gong Show: Refusing Ross McKitrick. by Steve McIntyre on August 13th, 2009. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6825
And via Benny Peiser:
The world’s source for global temperature record admits it’s lost or destroyed all the original data that would allow a third party to construct a global temperature record. The destruction (or loss) of the data comes at a convenient time for the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia – permitting it to snub FoIA requests to see the data. –Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 13 August 2009
Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. –Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, 21 February 2005
Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data. –Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, August 2009
If this information were to be released contrary to the conditions under which this institution received it, it would damage the trust that other national scientists and institutions have in UK-based public sector organisations. I apologise that your request will be met (sic) but if you have any further information needs in the future then please contact me. –Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, August 2009
There are stipulations on the data, with the exception that there are no stipulations on the data. Obviously, under such non-stipulated stipulations, we cannot supply the requested data. –Pat Frank, AC, 13 August 2009
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
As I have always maintained, AGW is not about science. The only link to science is the fact that it is being used as a smokescreen for other agendas.
Folks, we are fighting the State, not some academic sequestered in some ivory tower on some remote campus.
And remember, it is very dangerous being right about matters on which the State is wrong.
The excuse given for tossing the raw data is bogus. The whole GHCN data set is about 45 MB (I have it on my box, in a few dozen copies). A TB of disk costs less than $100 at Fry’s Electronics. A single DVD would hold a gigantic number of copies.
In the 1980s I ran a supercomputer site. We had one of the large Cray supercomputers and lots of data were created. I made dozens of sets of tape. We had a few GB of disk (big at that time) and made a MONTHLY full dump that was kept for a least a year, and a yearly dump that was kept forever. The temperature data would easily fit on a small part of one tape from that era (not even using the VHS, 8mm and other newer helical scan media that we had installed in our site then). A tape cost about $9 IIRC. So any argument that says it was due to no ability to store the data is bogus. It had to be done by choice, not necessity.
Oh, and we eventually (about1988? 90?) installed an STK Tape Robot with 2 TB of storage and an optical jukebox that was a few GB of online disks and unlimited “nearline” at very low costs per MB.
Frankly, the number of places that were storing GB of data on 9 track tape at the time give the lie to the idea that they just could not keep the raw data. Oh, and you could get 45 MB sized disk drives for the PCs of that era too. We’re just not talking a large data storage problem here. One 9 track tape, low double digit dollars, and a mid sized slot on a bookshelf.
Amazing. As for the claim that they can’t process 56 requests for the (same?) data, so nobody gets it, how about giving it to one reliable person and let them distribute it? Maybe even, gosh, put it on the Internet.
Agree entirely Louis, however as you are a scientist and I’m just an old Bushy form the back of Barellan, could you please explain this crazy statement from above?
“There are stipulations on the data, with the exception that there are no stipulations on the data.
Obviously, under such non- stipulated stipulations, we cannot supply the requested data.”
Seems to say it all to me.
Straight out of ” Yes Minister.”
Pikey.
Some readers may be familiar with the infamous case of Squirrel Blurt (Sir Cyril Burt), the erstwhile IQ guru. When asked for his raw data on identical twins, he said it was destroyed in the London blitz. It wasn’t, but he had good reason not to want others examining it too closely. There are several good books about the case. In his day, Cyril had strong political support, was able to change the whole British education system, and was given a knighthood. What a ripper!
This whole thing sounds like a great idea for a movie: “Tarzan of the Temperatures”, with Ahnold in the leading role. And let’s not forget the traditional kookaburra ‘jungle noises’.
An “army of technicians to process responses” – don’t make me laugh – these are the real scientists in British academic institutions, the ones that come up with the methodoloogies and equipment to make the experiments work – not the academics.
The technicians are the people presented with draft papers that have been sent off to resepected journals, and then are asked to do the experiments outlined in the “methods” section, and come up with the figures in the “results” section.
The technicians get shouted at when the results they obtain do not match the published results.
The technicians do not get a mention in the authorship of the papers, but occasionally, sometimes, an acknowlegement at the end.
The technicians can expect their services to be terminated at the end of a grant.
50 odd requests would take 50 odd mouse clicks , about 5 minutes strenuous work.
What a gormless mob of idiots.
Fortunately for Steve M the raw data sets would’ve already been sent to other people. All he has to do is ask one of them for a copy. I wonder why he hasn’t done this already?
Louis Hissink: “…it is very dangerous being right about matters on which the State is wrong,” and, I would add, “knows it is wrong.”
The continuation of a famous quotation runs, “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State,” I would say, “of the lying State”. Goebbels would have understood exactly what is happening in Australia today.
But all the lies that are compounding in the AGW / Carbon Pollution Reduction Scam, from the grossly misrepresented science to the dishonest politics of the Scam, have only four short months to limp before they are delivered safely into the waiting clauses of the Copenhagen Protocols. In the West we are witnessing a State sponsored coup d’etat with supranationalist intentions.
Whoa.. The world’s source for global temperature record admits it’s lost all the original data?? How then can a third party construct a global temperature record? It must be that global warming caused the data to be lost.
With a complacent majority [like JC] and a compliant MSM not interested or aware enough to ask the bleedin’ obvious questions, it’s gonna roll right over the lot of us.
“Recently statistician and blogger Steve McIntyre was denied access to specific data files at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. This Institution holds the longest official records for global temperatures as measured by thermometers. His request was refused on the basis he is not an academic – presumably meaning he is not currently employed by a University. He is a qualified statistician with an impressive career in private industry and various publications. Anyway, one of his colleagues, who does hold a university position, Ross McKitrick subsequently requested the same data and this request was also rejected, but for different reasons.”
If they want to be treated like scientists, they should behave like scientists. That means no barrage of insults, lies and abuse from their cowards castle. One of the main requirements of intellectual discourse is that it does not indulge in the personal and rhetorical. They break one of the important rules that has been developed for the spectacularly successful scientific method, then they whine about being shunned. It’s all their own doing. If they want to be treated with respect, they have to give it. McIntyre doesn’t go a day without rabble rousing and encouraging childish emotional responses. His website reminds me the picture theatre in 1994, with Goldstein being abused.
Pikey
Whaaat? That stipulated non stipulation is pure Humphrey Appleby – I am still trying to get my mind around it.
Pikey,
OK, some data has stipulations which limit its availibility.
Other data have no stipulations, and hence as there are no guiding principles on which to supply such data, policy is not to supply it on the basis of the precautionary principle. They can only supply data that has been stipulated.
JeremyC wrote:
Firstly, if the data has been sent to other researchers, why was it denied to Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Ryan O and others who clearly are interested in academic uses of the data only, and have peer reviewed papers on climate already published? Secondly, if the data comes from a source other than CRU, then it would probably be suggested that the data is not “as used” by CRU. Perhaps the answer is in Warwick Hughs’ answer from Phil Jones: “We have 25 years invested in this – why should I give you my data, when all you want to do is find mistakes?”. Yes, perhaps the answer is that they are jealously guarding their data because they know how little quality control it has, they don’t want to make public how little they actually do to generate their “value added” data!
SJT,
You are posting on the wrong thread – please go back to the right one.
Jeremy C – please provide the names of those who have been given the lost data then.
Neville – are you able to extend AGW stupidity any further? It’s only a mouse click away!
SJT wrote:
Amusingly, the same has been said of RealClimatebloggers! Both Snr and Jnr Pielke have had their run-ins with RC, as have many others who dare to question the proclaimations of truth, justice and the scientific way.
And yet, oddly, this appears to be your favoured form of attack – “Of course, he’d say that, he works for…”
It’s telling to actually follow such blogs – both sides. At CA, I personally find quite open and interactive – I don’t claim to follow anywhere near all the stats that I’d like to, but these actually are very good at stats and math generally. Published good. Recognised by their opponents as good! All done openly including quite a few alarmists who have been and gone – some even stay! It’s as much more real science and less opinion over RC, as RC is over WUWT, IMHO.
SJT is being deliberately vexatious. He knows full well that Steve Mc Intyre’s Blog, Climate Audit, has strict rules on behaviour and Steve sets the example by way of his own courteous behaviour.
He can be brusque as the odd occasion warrants, but SJT’s description of “Rabble Rouser” is the creation of of a perverse fabulist;-)
“SJT is being deliberately vexatious. He knows full well that Steve Mc Intyre’s Blog, Climate Audit, has strict rules on behaviour and Steve sets the example by way of his own courteous behaviour.”
You must be reading a different blog.
Just filing this here:
Fitzgerald, Anne M. and Pappalardo, Kylie M. and Fitzgerald, Brian F. and Austin,
Anthony C. and Abbot, John W. and Cosman, Brendan L. and O’Brien, Damien S. and
Singleton, Bill (2007) Building the infrastructure for data access and reuse in
collaborative research: An analysis of the legal context. -.
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00008865/
Become aware.Coming soon to Aust.Architects and Engineers Truth 911.[Nov 09] see http://ae911truth.org/
The usual collection of stupid comments by people who have never had to build anything like this in their lives. You really have to laugh about the “army of technicians” comment in the opening thread. Yaw – sure – like – as if !
This work started out long before Phil Jones and the CRU series assumed the prominence it has today. So Phil is now between a rock and hard place – he should offer the data set up – but he will have given undertaking from the many jurisdictions he has collected it from not to do so.
I reckon Jones’ response to Hughes was spot on. And he should do everything possible not to cooperate with McIntyre who has got nothing better to do than pretend he’s really not just an agent of denialism dressed up as some self-appointed auditor.
Of course McIntyre could so something USEFUL which is to build another time series himself. Let him earn his stripes and collect his own data set from the world’s met bureaus instead of simply bludging off the hard work of others.
Its a reasonable assumption that other researchers have had access to the data before and after it was so called ‘lost’ I’m sure as a genuine researcher Mcintyre would know who they are, have working relationships with them and get copies of the data he wants.
But in the denialists collective fevered imagination……………..
Okay, after a few days with my thinking cap on I have come up with a new and improved New Age energy fantasy, as follows:
The only real answer to the problem of 21st century energy production is the solar hydrogen economy. Hydrogen can be used as a fuel for base load electricity production, used as a fuel for the transport industry, and generally as an all-round substitute for carbon based fuels wherever they are used currently.
Hydrogen can be produced directly from water and solar energy via titanium oxide catalysts current under development at the University of New South Wales. I would envisage large scale solar hydrogen plants in the Australian desert areas, connected by high pressure pipeline to gas turbine power stations nearer to urban areas. The biggest advantage for Australia in particular in going down this road is that it is the gigantically vast potential export market. Since Australia consists mostly of desert areas with high insolation, it has the potential to become the worlds largest supplier of solar hydrogen. Liquified hydrogen could be shipped out to markets all over the world thus reducing or eliminating their dependence on coal for power generation. Yep, Australia could become the 21st century equivalent of an Arab oil state’s wet dream and solve the CO2 problem at the same time.
There are problems of course, but I don’t think that these are potentially impossible to overcome. An additional bonus is jobs could become available to indigenous peoples in remote areas. I am amazed and flabbergasted that Kruddie can spend $5 billion of the taxpayers money on an optical fibre broadband network, which is basically nothing more than an advanced consumer toy product, and virtually nothing on the further development of something as essential and vital as an effective solar hydrogen catalyst, which has such an enormous future export potential. But that’s Kruddie and his dimwitted bureaucrats for you.
The current situation in Australia, as in other countries, is that the emissions targets are forcing the premature introduction of junk technology such as windmills and solar panels, and the imposition of worthless bureaucratic solutions such as emissions trading schemes. Although I thought I would never see the day when I would agree with someone as deeply awful as Wilson Tuckey, he is correct in asserting that emission targets are worthless.
If Turnbull wants to position himself as an intelligent politician with something different to offer the public with regard to CO2 reduction and future energy supply than the current Labor sludgebucket, I would suggest he consult widely with industry and scientific bodies on this proposal. If it is feasible or potentially feasible, he should:
1. Oppose the signing of further emissions control agreements.
2. Drop the ETS in the rubbish bin and propose a simple domestic carbon tax or something similar.
3. Cook up some sort of visionary proposal for a National Large Scale Solar Hydrogen Scheme to be funded by the tax, or at least put forward a proposal to spend $10 billion plus on start up research, large scale experimental units etc. to get the ball rolling.
I can’t see why the media, greenies or the mindless rabble who are paying for it all could object. What are they going to offer up as an alternative, more windmills?
For Australia, the only reason for signing up for emissions controls is as a sop to the greenie vote or as some sort of vacuous form of moral leadership. In practical terms emissions controls are worthless if Asian nations do not sign up for them as well. I can’t blame them. Is China going to fuel its growing industrial economy with windmills and solar panels? Not likely.
Links:
http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/articles/2004/aug/Solar_hydrogen.html
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/innovations/stories/s1243804.htm
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/26/1093456749826.html
(see also Hydrogen Technologies from Wikipedia)
Luke said
“Of course McIntyre could so something USEFUL which is to build another time series himself. Let him earn his stripes and collect his own data set from the world’s met bureaus instead of simply bludging off the hard work of others.”
These people who now hold information that is of interest to many, should consider who paid their wages when they performed their “hard work”! Did they not receive the raw data from others who also were paid, or did they personally collect the temperatures and collate that information during their days off?.
They have been adequately paid, ..so what is the justification to withold such information.
If the information is accurate and well founded, then congratulatulations will be due.
These people should have nothing to fear unless they know something that they are not telling us.
When the hockey team publish dubious peer reviewed papers in Nature based on questionable data and someone like SM seeks to validate this stuff and is refused access to the data for long periods and then told that it no longer exists, people like Luke, JC and SJT think he is being unreasonable for highlighting this fact.
These papers are the backbone to the IPCC dogma on AGW!
The “science” that policymakers are basing our future govenance on!
I love your idea of due process.
Nothing demonstrates bad faith and fraud quite so clearly as with holding public data.
And nothing removes doubt of both so quickly as the comments from those with holding about how they are not going to let pesky skeptics point problems.
That our collection of AGW kooks and losers defends this only proves they are kooks and losers.
SJT,
Your definition of ‘rude and vexacious’ is ‘anyone to disagrees with any AGW promoter’.
“Your definition of ‘rude and vexacious’ is ‘anyone to disagrees with any AGW promoter’.”
No, it’s anyone who is rude and vexacious.
Spangled,
“When the hockey team publish dubious peer reviewed papers in Nature based on questionable data and someone like SM seeks to validate this stuff and is refused access to the data”
Its a bit like this. If I came up to you and said, “give me your data because you are a bastard and I need the data as a fig leaf for my prior purpose of ridiculing you to destroy your reputation and generally crush you no matter how careful or truthful your results are”, do you really think you will drive over to my place and hand the data over personally?
Denialists need to destroy truth in science where it conflicts with their ideological obsessions and the Hockey stick stuff is an example of this?
Dr Jones popped up at Niche to castigate Dr Stockwell’s support of McLean and to advocate the notion that AGW can cause ENSO which can cause Walker Circulation disruption and that natural ENSO can’t cause temperature trends; Dr Jones relies on Vecchi and Power and Smith get a look in. Dr Stockwell refutes Dr Jones’s fanciful notion; no wonder he obfuscates.
http://landshape.org/enm/comment-on-mclean-submitted/
WOW !! Coho – did yo’all bow down or anything.
Or do something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtqesudKxSA 1’33” onwards.
I hope you said “we’re not mental or anything”.
And I do hope you admitted to being scum !! Hahahahahahaha
“We’re scum. We suck !!”.
Although – what’s Jonesy doing slumming it with you lot. Maybe he was lost in the Intertubes or somethin’? Hope he pissed in your lounge while he was there.
The fob off letter ends …….. I opologise that your request will? be met but if you have any further information needs in the future then please contact me.
Yeah right! Obviously he didn’t ask nicely enough.
These taxpayer funded clowns need ripping out of their towers and strangling with their own ivy.
Not to worry. Truth will out.
Non publishing and data denying Luke on line again after a few tablets…woooHa!
I don’t know who Luke is, but I would guess he is another “academic” who gets funded by taxpayers. He certainly seems to have some sort of a problem, as his comment at 12.22am would indicate. He talks about the hardwork of the likes of Jones, but these people don’t know what hard work is. The hardest thing they do is to keep applying for grants and funding so that they can publish flawed papers and jet off around the world meeting their buddies. If they had to work in the real world, where they have to create something useful, then they wouldn’t survive. “The labourer is worthy of his hire” does not apply to them.
Luke,
If you were trying this defence on in terms of the JORC code, you would be doing porridge – but hypocrisy is your style, no? One rule for the state scientists, another one for the prols and common folk whose earnings are ripped off to pay your wages and superannuation.
The term Lysenkoist seems to be more accurate as time goes on with the AGW scam.
Destroying these data, or blocking access to them, is nothing less than advocating ignorance.
There are only a very few things more contemptible than advocating ignorance.
Well Philly Blabber – about what you’d expect – an opinionated unsubstantiated spray from an uninformed whinger.
Sinkers – JORC code – what a bit of myopic drivel. Having you in any position obviously makes a mockery of such pretentiousness anyway. Don’t have yourself on.
“There are only a very few things more contemptible than advocating ignorance.” HELLO – is this Schiller of all people who said this. Contemptible double standards.
SJT,
You can say what you will, but your actions say I am correct.
fwiw, “Luke” is supposedly an ensemble of bureaucrats posting their enlightened prose for us all.
Luke,
Amazing – you post so much but say so little – what are you? A cunieformed black hole?
Nothing surprises me about the attitude and arrogance of those being paid out of the public purse. But if there is one group that displays it almost without fail across the globe, it is the so called science community, and no more so than the cabal of alarmists.
So the Jones behaviour and that of the CRU doesnt suprise me one bit.
Its no different to Steffen of the ANU receiving a mates rates job from the Dept of Climate Change, also in Canberra, to produce that appalling supposedly IPCC up date document for them–and then declaring that he doesnt debate any of the issues with anyone likely to be sceptical ( The Australian last week). So much for the scientific method.
Or, the biggest coward and crook of them all is that slob who passes himself off as an ex VP of the USA,and wouldnt even talk to a lowly senator Fielding, because he was too busy ingratiating himself with the money men of Australia, who like him see nothing but dollar signs in front of their eyes.
But then the yanks themselves are just like us, basically stupid, because they also put up with public officials moon lighting whilst holding down senior positions in govt and being environmental activists at the same time. They dont come any better at this than Hansen.
Poor old Jonesy of the CRU might have got his knickers in twist because someone wanted access to his data –but it is hardly surprising in this shonkademic game is it.
The real suckers are the mug punters like you and me who have to pay for this -one way or tother.
dribble,
unfortunately for you, Pres. Bush the younger actually pushed Hydrogen infrastructure build out. Since the left, and warmers, KNOW that Bush is evil and wrong about everything you might as well fugeddaboudit!!!
If that were not enough, Pres. Obama, the Anointed One, has declared Hydrogen a dead issue.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/16/2657157.htm
..and to add to this here we have, in the last hour or so the ABC pulling its usual con job of protraying smoke stacks billowing clouds of whatever –usually water vapour.
But then what can you expect when it, as a Corporation ( guess what and entirely publically funded) employs some of the most rabidly biased journalists of any media outlet Australia has ever had.
Top of the current list has to be Red Kerry and that Tony Jones–whose appearances of the tv activates an immediate turn off- got better things to do than watch more palpable crap from them.
Jeremy C,
Fair suck of the sauce bottle! Those may be the “subtle” motives behind all this but that is all subjective and for personalities to be involved is childish.
These data are supposed to be available to all under EIR, apart from FOI.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/14/another-uk-climate-data-scandal-is-emerging/
For those who want to see a good reason for not releasing raw data, here’s a good compilation of some long-term raw data for various sites around the world:
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Africa
Nothing new here for those who have been following the “global temperature” issue, but it’s useful having so much data within a few clicks. If you click through the records for various sites, try to think what kind of algorithm you would need to turn the indvidual site data into a weighted average that would actually scare anyone. If you had such an algorithm, I’d think you’d be pretty careful to prevent anyone seeing it.
I’ve had a quick look at the john-daly data for Oz to see what evidence there might be that temperatures increased over the last century. I’ve taken the highest temperature from 1920-1940 (for a few missing earlier data [5] I’ve taken data in the 1950s) and the highest after 1980 (variable end date) to the nearest 0.5C. Excluded data with earliest dates later than that. A paired 2-tail t-test gave p=0.23. Average difference late-early = 0.18C (less than the precision in the original measurements). So, very small increase, not statistically significant.
“You can say what you will, but your actions say I am correct.”
You have no idea what actions I went through to arrive at the conclusion that AGW is fundamentally correct. The only evidence you have is your own prejudices about me.
Kuhnkat: “unfortunately for you, Pres. Bush the younger actually pushed Hydrogen infrastructure build out. Since the left, and warmers, KNOW that Bush is evil and wrong about everything you might as well fugeddaboudit!!!
If that were not enough, Pres. Obama, the Anointed One, has declared Hydrogen a dead issue.”
The attitude of the Anointed One and his peerless advisors is most likely due to the current ideology that hydrogen can only be produced in large quantities from petrochemical sources. In this form the hydrogen economy is not particularly attractive.
However if hydrogen is produced from solar energy on a large scale then all of these objections go away.
The only real negative about the solar hydrogen economy that I can see is the leakage issue. Any raw unburned hydrogen that escapes into the atmosphere has a slight pollutive effect. It reacts with ozone to form OH- radicals which are supposedly a greenhouse gas (I wouldn’t worry too much about that one just yet) but it does have an effect on the ozone layer. To what extent this may be an issue if hydrogen fuel was adopted world wide I do not know.
The main issue is that the world needs a serious technical fix to the CO2 problem (if there is one) and similarly the issue of fossil fuel depletion. Fucking around with windmills and ETSs is a dead end.
I still remember the storm that erupted when McIntyre demanded to see the source code for GISS temperature adjustments. It was the end of the world when he couldn’t see it. It clearly demonstrated that Hansen had something to hide, that there was a massive conspiracy.
The code was released, there was nothing wrong with it, the issue died instantly. But McIntyre had created the impression of something wrong.
To see how unstable is any conclusion you draw from this sort of data: there are a few records with warmer years before 1920. Including these (so the comparison is warmest before 1950 vs warmest after 1980) gives a difference -0.06 (cooler now, but negligible) and p=0.75.
SJT “McIntyre doesn’t go a day without rabble rousing and encouraging childish emotional responses”.
Gee whiz…revealing bad science and corrupt data is now rabble rousing and a childish emotional response. Come on, SJT, we both know why you’re mad at Steve M, he upset your pet theory.
How about the response of Gavin Schmidt when he barred Steve Mac from commenting on realclimate? Talk about childish. The reason data is being withheld from Steve Mac is they know he’ll find inconsistencies and downright corrupt data. If they have nothing to fear then why not let him see it?
SJT Wrote:
SM did find something wrong with the GISS code – see here. There is nothing wrong with the “trust, but verify” method – frankly, I am more than a little surprised that anyone would be upset in any way by someone seeking to “poke holes” in scientific papers. That’s what science is all about!
Is it wrong to demand transparency and independant verification by “aggressive” opponents of data and methods when several trillion dollars of public money is up for grabs? If you tried a similar thing on the stock exchange, you’d be in gaol before you could even say “peer reviewed”!
“SM did find something wrong with the GISS code – see here. There is nothing wrong with the “trust, but verify” method – frankly, I am more than a little surprised that anyone would be upset in any way by someone seeking to “poke holes” in scientific papers. That’s what science is all about!”
He didn’t find that from looking at the source, he found it by datamining.
The response is
“The effect on global means and all our tables was less than 0.01 C. In the display most sensitive to that change – the US-graph of annual means – the anomalies decreased by about 0.15 C in the years 2000-2006.”
As for
Science has had a proven and effective method of self regulation that has worked spectacularly well for over a century.
* If you think you are right and they are wrong, you do your research and demonstrate it in the peer reviewed literature.
* You do not indulge in personal attacks.
McIntyre obviously has problems with both those, he very rarely publishes.
Most topics on his website involve personal digs and snide insinuations.
Since he eschews being involved in the proven and effective scientific method, leave to rot outside of the system. He has no ‘right’ to demand anything.
Shut up SJT you piece of human garbage. Of course he has a right to demand the data. The fact that these people won’t hand it over is proof of scientific fraud on their part. Its as simple as that so stop your trash-talk. Their lies don’t square with the satellite record, or regional mid-latitude evidence suggesting the 30’s was warmer than the 90’s. You don’t have the right to breath or even type anonymously. But the rest of us have the right to that data and they all ought to be sacked over this disgusting behaviour, which amounts to a confession on their part.
Its obvious that the mediocre dullwitted believer blogs like RealClimate and their mindless acolytes such as SJT are jealous of McIntyre because of his sense of humour. Not only does he take them down a peg he does it with style and pizazz. I would say he is rapidly turning into Canada’s most famous son. If AGW turns out to be a first-order scientific balls-up he’ll be the most famous person in history. Go Steve!
Sorry, the most famous person in history after Jesus. I wouldn’t want to upset the American religous fundamentalists.
SJT wrote:
Because, at that point in time, the code was NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
If you care to check, you will note that:
* the USA temperature record was changed by 0.15C as noted.
* the rest of the world was not changed simply because it does not undergo the same adjustment procedure as the USA data.
* the USA data is regarded as the “best” data in that records are more complete, meta data is more up to date and so on.
So, the best data in the world is adjusted, while the rest of the world, with inferior data and meta data is not adjusted. The adjustment procedure is shown to be producing artifacts unnoticed by the people doing the adjustment, yet those adjustments, which amount to 0.15C or about 20% of the claimed increase in temperatures “don’t matter”. A couple of natural questions arise from this information:
1) why are we doing these adjustments if they “don’t matter” and do not affect GAT?
2) why are we not adjusting the “worst practice” data, but are adjusting “best practice” data?
3) why are we “polluting” good data with data of lesser quality?
You will note that none of the above in any way questions what CO2 does (or doesn’t) do, what the future and past of climate means, or anything of that nature – it is merely questioning the provinence, accuracy, precision and error ranges of existing climate data. Surely such questions are apt and expected when decisions involving matters of public policy and who gets huge amounts of public money (and for what purpose) are about to decided or are being decided RIGHT NOW! Here in NSW at least, we are well aware, thanks to the fate of several toll road operators who relied on official traffic projections, that such data need to be minutely analysed and scrutinised for errors of all types, or else we – the taxpayers – will be footing the bill for yet another white elephant. If such questions have been asked and answered, then I, for one, would like to see the results – since I’m one of the people paying for it, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we have all this sort of information. Do you?
SJT: “Science has had a proven and effective method of self regulation that has worked spectacularly well for over a century.”
Has it? As a self confessed scientific ignoramus how did you arrive at this conclusion? Those of us in science might disagree with your conclusion.
SJT:
“* You do not indulge in personal attacks.
McIntyre obviously has problems with both those, he very rarely publishes.
Most topics on his website involve personal digs and snide insinuations.
Since he eschews being involved in the proven and effective scientific method, leave to rot outside of the system. He has no ‘right’ to demand anything.”
Which is precisely what you have done – made a personal attack on Steve McIntyre.
“Which is precisely what you have done SJT – made a personal attack on Steve McIntyre”
Touche Louis………touche.
Dr Jones of CRU and Will Steffen of the ANU display similiar traits.
Too prescious by miles, but then they can afford to be when someone else is paying their salaries.
Its about time this cosy little boys club was busted open and called to account in the same way as everyone else.
“Which is precisely what you have done – made a personal attack on Steve McIntyre.”
I am in the pigpen with McIntyre. What’s he doing here?
“So, the best data in the world is adjusted, while the rest of the world, with inferior data and meta data is not adjusted.”
LOL. Best data in the world. LOL.
Quickly, SJT. Stick that bong up your bum. The cops are coming.
Steve McIntyre obviously isn’t terribly popular with some posters on this site. The reasons for this are well summed up by Anthony Watts on his blog Watts Up With That for August 8, 2007.
McIntyre and McKitrick had shown that the ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of temperatures for the last millennium, supposedly demolishing the Medieval Warm Period, contained serious errors. The errors produced a hockey stick even from random data. McIntyre’s critique was independently validated by the Wegman report in 2006.
McIntyre had also discovered an error in the GISS records. When this was corrected, the warmest year in the US was no longer 1998 but 1934. In fact the 1930s had quite a number of the warmest years on record in the US. It is emphasised that these figures are for the US not the whole planet.
But McIntyre has twice uncovered significant errors in temperature records. Moreover, in both cases he encountered substantial difficulties in obtaining the basic data and methods required for checking.
Now none of this necessarily disproves some level of AGW. But it does show that some key work in the field is disturbingly sloppy, and is not transparent as regards data and methods. It is scarcely surprising that CRU should also encounter questions on the score of its limited access. Critics of McIntyre often stress the importance of peer review. Would not peer review benefit from free availability of data and methods?
If you are going to apply the precautionary principle the first step should be to determine exactly what is going on. Only when this is sorted out do you move on to what to do about the situation. The major reason why AGW skepticism is important (apart from moral and intellectual reasons) is that the AGW hysteria is causing the premature introduction of worthless knee-jerk emissions control schemes and worthless knee-jerk technology. If AGW is real, the reality is that none of these knee-jerk schemes will have any practical effect on the outcome. We are all going to drown like rats in the sea anyway no matter how many windmills are installed. If AGW is not real, we can allow the normal course of technological evolution to occur at its own rate over the next century. By the time the fossil fuel runs out, decent replacement solutions will have arrived. Therefore it is vital to know whether AGW is actually real or not.
The Liberal Party should be pushing for public discussion about precisely what practical value emissions controls have in the real world. If Australia’s emissions are a drop in the ocean compared with the output of China for example, what is the real point of emissions control for Australia? If their only value is as a pointless form of moral vacuity, let us have this out in public.
SJT:
“I am in the pigpen with McIntyre. What’s he doing here?”
Actually you only imagine he is with you – he is actually in Italy and going to Erice for a climate conference.
John Quiggin describes climate sceptics as delusional – methinks he is describing trhe wrong mob. ANyone who thinks he is in a pigpen with Steve McIntyre has needs an appointment with a psychoanalyst about delusional challenges. And have you considered the flak PETA might throw in your direction?
“THE entire team of anaesthetists at St Vincent’s Private Hospital – more than 30 doctors – is under investigation for acting as a cartel.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is moving to end what other doctors claim is a decades-long history of restrictive behaviour by an old boys’ network”
Looks like peer rview at work.
Has anyone seen the NASA GISS temp anomalies for July map. Note that Britain is clearly shown in the 1-2C above average band shading. Yet the Met Office on their summary page tell us the July temps in Britain were normal, with only parts of Scotland 0.8C above and southern parts below average.
Can anyone else see this?
Check the NASA GISS map at:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=07&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=07&year1=2009&year2=2009&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
versus Met Office summary at:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/
No wonder they don’t want you to see the data. Sniff, sniff – can anyone else feel a climate warming conference coming on?
David Elder,
Peer review works in the hard physical sciences when experiments are easily done but in one such as climate science, where immediate testing of an hypothesis is night well impossible, peer review tends to be used to counter criticism and to maintain the status quo. Notice that the use of complex statistics to support an argument is itself the argument – it’s all about proving that the AGW hypothesis is correct by dialectics, not from coercion of hard physical fact.
The fact that there is so much resistance to releasing the raw data, or losing it for God’s sake, has parallels in the mining industry when speculative mining entrepreneurs try to fob off moose pasture by embellishing it with fictional assays etc.
That there is so little transparency in some sections of climate science is disturbing but we also need to realise that it’s government science we are dealing with – and government science does the bidding of government.
Climate science became a whore when Thatcher asked them to find reasons to close the UK coal mines down. It has since become a billion dollar tax payer funded gravy train.
SJT wrote:
Perhaps I should have qualified it so: “best surface temperature data set in the world”.
In any case, you will find that GISS, NOAA and even HADCRU will be happy to confirm that the USA surface temperature record is the most reliable, most dense, and likely most accurate such data in the world. To me, that makes it “best in the world”, regardless of how amusing you may find the description.
GISS are certainly a strange mob though – I mean, they undo the NOAA adjustments, then perform their own adjustments and as far as I can see, the only use they make of this re-adjusted data is for GISSTEMP GAT. Since USA data makes up around 2% of the surface, they would need to make changes on the order of 5C to make 0.1C change in GAT. Yet their adjustments are around an order of magnitude LESS than this. I don’t think too many people are concerned with a 0.01C change in GAT. I wonder why they bother when the difference between NOAA adjustments and GISS adjustments would likely be making a difference of 1/1000th of 1C.
Ian George – of course you might ponder what the base period is for both analyses. Too hard? Easier to rant? pfttt !
Sinkers “government science does the bidding of government” – WTF – you’d like them to the bidding for whom then? Whatever they feel like? Then you’d say they’re unaccountable? Governments might set the broad issues but they don’t necessarily get the results they want.
But I suppose in Sinkers anarchy world you’d like scientists to not action a government’s policy agenda?
“Climate science became a whore when Thatcher asked them to find reasons to close the UK coal mines down.” – and Margy ran the entire planet did she?
Sinkers you’re full of bullshit !
Denialist clowns.
Luke,
Oh, so they use different base periods. Like 1961-90 (most systems) or 1951-80 (Hansen) or 1901-2000 (NOAA) or 1971-2000 (new one I’ve seen somewhere).
So what’s the point? Make them all conform to one standard or the whole anomaly thing is pointless.
No wonder they don’t wish to reveal their data.
“Make them all conform” – says who – it’s two different countries independent science efforts – USA & UK – “make them !!!” LOL
Who’s going to pay for the massive task? Are you making a donation?
The previous point being that it is reckless to compare anomalies from 2 different base periods !! Which you did in the previous post.
You will find Ian after all the changes you’d like – absolutely nothing worth knowing. In fact the RSS, MSU, CRU and GISS data sets all resemble each other. What do you think you’re going to find ?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.146/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.238/mean:12
Alas! Our politicians and scientists cannot save us. We are all doomed in the coming ecological conflagration. We must pray to the aliens to save us. At least the thinner ones amongst us may survive.
Luke
They just change the base periods to suit themselves – first Hansen then NOAA.
Well SJT I took your advice and re-read ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ by Spencer Weart.
Unfortunately it impressed me even less the second time around. Its little more than a politicized propaganda piece for the already convinced, or those with a desperate need to convince themselves such as yourself.
The most glaring and immediate problem with the book is the continual confusion of the concepts of ‘global warming’ and ‘anthropogenic global warming’. This confusion is right there in the title ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’. This really means, in Weart’s confused ideology, ‘The Discovery of Anthropogenic Global Warming’. For a start could he please change the title and fix up the hundreds of references in the text that refer to ‘global warming’ to ‘anthropogenic global warming’ thanks. That way it would be at least clear as to what he is talking about and the naive reader is less likely to muddle these concepts up in his mind.
I found Weart’s chapter ‘Reflections on the Scientific Process as seen in Climate Studies’ so hopelessly naive as to almost bizarre. Check out this quote:
“For the process to work, scientists must trust their colleagues. How is the trust maintained? The essential kind of trust comes from sharing a goal, namely, the pursuit of reliable knowledge, and from sharing principles for how to pursue that goal. Integrity in telling the truth is one important principle, but it is not enough: while scientists rarely cheat one another, they easily fool themselves. Another necessary principle is to take things apart — tolerating dissent, allowing every rational argument to be heard in public discussion. A third principle is to put things together — arguing out a consensus on important points, even while agreeing to disagree on others. These principles and more are inculcated in training, and reinforced by daily interactions. ”
Well that’s the theory but not the practice. Weart then prattles on about climate science being a nice little example of Darwinian evolution and follows up with comparisons to sexual reproduction. Nothing about power politics, corruption, ideology, paradigms, herd-behaviours, self-interest, quasi-religion and money.
Ian, for a fuller discussion on ‘offsets’ and the reason for them see this;
http://www.woodfortrees.org/notes
luke has been sneaky again; the offsets are calculated on the basis of the difference of the annual means from the land based HadCrut and GISS from the satellites over the satellite base period; HadCrut and GISS are in effect being partially detrended to bring them into line with the satellites so no wonder the smoothed trends become similar; the real test is undertaking a linear regression of the offset HadCrut and GISS and comparing that to the satellites; so, how about it luke?
“Well SJT I took your advice and re-read ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ by Spencer Weart. ”
If all you can whine about is the terminology. CO2 and it’s role in Global Warming in general, and AGW in particular, are distinct because CO2 has been involved in past natural warming events as a feedback, and sometimes as a forcing. The terms also do become interchangeable over time, it’s natural human usage of language to contract long phrases, you can’t have anything of substance to say.
Another whine about nothing to do with the history of the discovery of the role of CO2 in climate.
Nothing of actual substance on long history of research, scientific debate and role of different institutions and individual. Nothing at all that is worth a comment. Amazing.
Nothing at all about the history of the discovery of the role of CO2 in climate and global warming.
dribble,
You summed up AGW pretty well, actually: propaganda whose effect is to keep people confused.
Sorry SJT, I did look for your sake but I couldn’t find much history worth speaking about. If Weart cannot even get his basic terminology right, why I should be interested any further in his trashy tabloid tripe? If he is going to pretend to be a historian of science, which is his self-description not mine, where’s the intellectual quality? Its just another example of low-rent propaganda fodder for kiddies and adolescents. No wonder you love it, the book has been pitched at just the right demographic for you.
Check out Weart’s naive description of the IPCC in this paragraph (from the chapter Climatology as a Profession):
“In some fields the IPCC process became the central locus for arguments and conclusions. This went farthest among computer modelers, whose efforts increasingly focussed on cooperative projects to produce results for the IPCC assessments. When climate modellers studied the details of each factor that went into their calculations, and when they sought large sets of data to check the validity of their results, they had to interact with every specialty that had anything to say about climate change. Every group felt an intense pressure to come up with answers, as demanded by the world’s governments and by their own rising anxieties about the future. In countless grueling exchanges of ideas and data, the experts in each field hammered out agreements on precisely what they could, or could not, say with confidence about each scientific question. Their projections of future climate, and the IPCC reports in general, were thus the output of a great engine of interdisciplinary research. In the world of science this was a social mechanism altogether unprecedented in its size, scope, complexity and efficiency—as well as in its importance for future policy.”
In Weart’s imagination, the IPCC is a shining cluster of scientific good guys in white coats, massively intent on determining the facts. Its a good description of how believers view this self-serving, incompetent and corrupt bureaucracy. Sadly, Weart’s book is a Readers Digest view of reality. I believe Readers Digest is still going, perhaps Weart should submit his manuscript for publication in that magazine. It would fit right in.
FWIW, if the original stuff was on tape as it probably was, it might even not matter that it existed or not, and as to Phil Jones’ army, that is a figment of someone’s imagination.
Ow 56 requests, perhaps CRU could place the data on a webserver?
Like KNMI does in Holland?
This IS the 21st century after all…
SJT, Weart is grossly outdated, http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm#S1
“Herr J Koch” is the swedish Physicsist John Koch who produced the first accurate measurement of the logarithimic nature of heat absorption by CO2.
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/Koch_fig1.gif
Based on Koch’s measurements Arrhenius lowered his 1896 extreme esitmates in 1906 to more modern values of Co2 warming.
ref:
John Koch, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Wärmeabsorption in Kohlensäure., Öfversigt af Kongl. Vetenskaps-Akademiens Förhandlinger, 1901. N:o 6 p 475-488
Svante Arrhenius, 1906, Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen, Meddelanden från K. Vetenskapsakademiens Nobelinstitut, Vol 1 No 2, pages 1–10
Josh Halpern Eli Rabett wrote:
Of course it doesn’t matter – if it in any way questions your favoured theory, it’s immaterial, right Eli? It “doesn’t matter” that Mann et al used bad stats and that they invalidate his “hockey stick”, because he got the “right” answer, didn’t he? It doesn’t matter if the models are not validated, because they give the “right” answer. It doesn’t matter if no-one can replicate research providing that research gives the “right” answer. “[we have to] decide on the right balance between being honest and being effective”, don’t we Eli? “It doesn’t matter if the science is wrong, there are other [good] reasons” to change our entire economy, right Eli? It “doesn’t matter” who discovered a mistake and we don’t need to credit them because it doesn’t change the basic conclusions of the paper, right Eli? Of course, it changes our confidence intervals and makes the statistical significance non-existent, but hey, the conclusions still stand, right?
Neil ol boy, Eli knows where there are buildings full of computer tapes that you might as well throw in the ocean because
1. No one has the tape readers
2. No one knows the format the tapes were written in
3. No one knows what the numbers refer to because to save storage they were just recorded as strings of numbers.
4. And, of course, computer tape ages, so even if you knew 1-3 the magnetic materials flakes off the tape as you try to read it (not so frequent, but especially amusing as the tape reader you thought you have turns brown orange and fails)
So why not throw them in the ocean? Because that would require money to move them and a dumping permit.
PS: you might remember that Eli pretty much pointed McIntyre in the right direction
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/08/its-not-watt-you-think-tony-watts.html
““Herr J Koch” is the swedish Physicsist John Koch who produced the first accurate measurement of the logarithimic nature of heat absorption by CO2.
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/Koch_fig1.gif
Based on Koch’s measurements Arrhenius lowered his 1896 extreme esitmates in 1906 to more modern values of Co2 warming.”
LOL. That’s the first time I have heard someone refer to a history as outdated. It’s a historical record, that describes the progress of the knowledge and understanding of CO2.
“It “doesn’t matter” that Mann et al used bad stats and that they invalidate his “hockey stick”, ”
He didn’t use bad stats, he was doing ground breaking research. If we are to go by your standards, Newton got it wrong too.
Josh/Eli,
I don’t know about you, but for me, and for every large organisation I’ve worked for, every time I update my computer, I have a complete copy of my old data – yep, complete. In fact, I tend to end up with multiple copies of my data – some copies here, some at home, some over there, some on ZIP disk, some on CD, some on DVD, some on floppy disk, some on tape. But mostly, what I have is data on my HDDs, because each time I buy one, it has somewhere between 2 and 10 times the storage of the one it replaces, so I copy all the old data over and still have plenty of space to spare. This is not a large amount of data, I admit, but even so… 20 years ago when I worked at CSIRO as, amongst other things, a computer support person, we had several GB (a lot, back then) of network storage and it was backed up regularly on tape – I know, because I did it. And every time we did an upgrade, all that data was dumped from the old “almost full” disks to the new “not even close to full” disks. We kept *everything*, and even restored “old” data that previously had to be taken “off line”. Mainly because as each generation of mass storage was implemented, the old, archived data was only a tiny fraction of our new space – which, of course, naturally filled up with new data. And when we were looking for stuff to take off-line, it was almost never the older data – it never seemed to take up enough space to make it worthwhile removing! Instead, we’d delete multiple copies down to a single copy, and archive data that hadn’t been accessed for several months – and then, at the next upgrade, likely restore it’s on-line status anyway!
P.S. For each example of where the system “works”, there is a counter-example of where it doesn’t. Perhaps we need to quantify just how well it works with a study? No? Then perhaps it would be more honest to suggest that where we need to make post hoc adjustments, we should adjust our uncertainty in the data by at least the same amount as the adjustment. Oh – that would remove the statistical significance of your analysis wouldn’t it? Oops – can’t have that, can we? Might introduce some doubt you know.
P.P.S. Do you have a validation study on a climate model yet?
“Sorry SJT, I did look for your sake but I couldn’t find much history worth speaking about. If Weart cannot even get his basic terminology right, why I should be interested any further in his trashy tabloid tripe?”
I don’t know? Because you are scared to read the history of research into CO2 and it’s effect on climate? He did get the terminology correct, as I pointed out. You are just whining about irrelevancies.
No Coho – you’re being sneaky. They’re different data sets and should have slightly different trends. However the squiggle variation is the same. You guys love to go on about NOTHING !
Neil Fisher – don’t kid yourself what you may have done in CSIRO “back in the day”. Budgets in these areas have been very slim. Years of disinterest and neglect. Much of BoM’s pre-1957 data are on paper in the national archives. Not even computerised. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/how/climarc.shtml Probably nothing more since then.
Frankly – Phil Jones and GISS are mad to try to put together an international climate record – what a thankless onerous task !
“Frankly – Phil Jones and GISS are mad to try to put together an international climate record – what a thankless onerous task !”
I wouldn’t fancy at all the abuse they have to put up with. The web is full of non stop calls for them to face criminal charges, charges of professional misconduct, humiliation and public pillorying, with McIntyre leading the charge with his own brand of ‘dog whistle’ politics.
luke, the devil is in the detail; the squiggle variation you talk about is not the same;
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/last:12/offset:-0.15/plot/gistemp/last:12/offset:-0.24/plot/uah/last:12/plot/rss/last:12
At its maximum the difference in the “squiggle detail” is 0.4C; this why GISS is still showing a +ve trend for temperature and the other indices are all negative and have been since 1998; the point here is despite the WFT offsets the fundamental divergence between the temperature indices remains; that divergence is the difference between cooling and warming.
Luke and SJT….what know-nothings! Ignorance is bliss!
Let us pray…..Oh Great Goddess Gaia…we beseesch you…please, punish Steve M……Amen
“Luke and SJT….what know-nothings! Ignorance is bliss!
Let us pray…..Oh Great Goddess Gaia…we beseesch you…please, punish Steve M……Amen”
In other words, nothing.
Quoting from Weart above:
“Every group felt an intense pressure to come up with answers, as demanded by the world’s governments and by their own rising anxieties about the future. In countless grueling exchanges of ideas and data, the experts in each field hammered out agreements on precisely what they could, or could not, say with confidence about each scientific question.”
Note how the world-saviour climatologists are here stated by Weart to be influenced by the need to come up with answers under pressure from governments, and ‘their own rising anxieties about the future’. Clearly a recipe for throwing objectivity out the window, particularly if they had already made up their minds. The Hockey Mann obviously felt the need to commit fraud to save the world, although I think Mann is altogether more venal than a person merely suffering from anxieties. His buddies looked the other way to cover up the fraud, even if they actually noticed it. CSIRO bigwigs like Raupach are still committing the same frauds for sake of climate anxiety even as we speak.
From Weart:
“Their projections of future climate, and the IPCC reports in general, were thus the output of a great engine of interdisciplinary research. In the world of science this was a social mechanism altogether unprecedented in its size, scope, complexity and efficiency—as well as in its importance for future policy”
This is the sort of puff piece you would expect from an IPCC promotional brochure, not in an alleged scientific history. Weart’s book is for IPCC customers only.
You read some of it, congratulations.
“Note how the world-saviour climatologists are here stated by Weart to be influenced by the need to come up with answers under pressure from governments, and ‘their own rising anxieties about the future’. Clearly a recipe for throwing objectivity out the window, particularly if they had already made up their minds. The Hockey Mann obviously felt the need to commit fraud to save the world, although I think Mann is altogether more venal than a person merely suffering from anxieties. His buddies looked the other way to cover up the fraud, even if they actually noticed it. CSIRO bigwigs like Raupach are still committing the same frauds for sake of climate anxiety even as we speak.”
“world-saviour”? They did some research, they found it had dramatic implications. You are putting the cart before the horse, they didn’t set out to be ‘world-saviours’. There was no fraud by Mann, although McIntyre is an expert at making everyone say that, without actually saying it himself. Dog Whistle politics at it’s finest.
Quoting from Weart again: (from the chapter Climatology as a Profession)
“For many kinds of research, climatologists, geochemists, meteorologists, botanists, and so forth added to their disciplinary category a second form of identification — an all-embracing name reflecting a new social orientation and holistic approach — “environmental scientist.” They were borrowing the luster of a word that had come to stand for a widely admired attitude, with concerns embracing the Earth as a whole.”
A perfect description of climate science as green advocacy. I have got nothing against greenery as such, which is why I cannot understand why the green twat-heads are hell bent on destroying what’s left by covering it with butt-ugly windmills, tidal power and the rest of the eco-power rubbish. What’s the point of having a landscape if it is smothered with giant whitegood products. Can’t they even at least paint the bloody windmills in interesting colors for fucks sake?
From Weart (chapter on The Modern Temperature Trend)
“The temporary northern cooling had been bad luck for climate science. By feeding skepticism about the greenhouse effect, while provoking a few scientists (and rather more journalists) to speculate publicly about the coming of a new ice age, the cool spell gave the field a reputation for fecklessness that it would not soon live down.
I love that sentence. “….cooling had been bad luck for climate science” Talk about wearing armor-plated bias on your sleeve
Here is Weart on the Hockey Stick (chapter on The Modern Temperature Trend):
“The “hockey stick” graph was prominently featured in a report issued in 2001 by a consensus of experts (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). It immediately became a powerful tool for people who were trying to raise public awareness of global warming — to the regret of some seasoned climate experts who recognized that, like all science at the point of publication, it was preliminary and uncertain.”
Who were the ‘seasoned climate experts’ who recognised that the hockey stick was preliminary and uncertain? Did they speak up? Did they engage in debate? Apparently not, it was left to a total outsider to point out the fraud five years after its initial publication. The response of the scientific establishment was to close ranks and proceed to cover up the issue. As McIntyre later pointed out, his criticisms of dendroclimatological proxies perversely led to their increased use in temperature reconstructions.
Who were these mystery ‘people who were trying to raise public awareness of (anthropogenic) global warming who had ‘mistakenly’ relied on the Hockey Stick? Why golly gosh, it was the climate scientists and IPCC bureaucrats themselves.
Weart is fraudulently trying to give the impression that the IPCC good guys in fact ‘knew’ that the Hockey Stick was dodgy but, hey, it was not their fault if political advocates used to their advantage. What a joke of a book.
No Coho – GISS includes the Arctic. No try-ons now.
From Weart (chapter on The Modern Temperature Trend)
“Pursuing this in a more sophisticated way, computer models predicted that greenhouse gases would cause a particular pattern of temperature change. It was different from what might be caused by other external influences, such as solar variations. The observed geographical pattern of change did in fact bear a rough resemblance to the computers’ greenhouse effect maps. “It is likely that this trend is partially due to human activities,” the researchers concluded, “although many uncertainties remain.” Even before it was published, the finding impressed the community of climate scientists. In an important 1995 report, the world’s leading experts offered the “fingerprint” as evidence that greenhouse warming was probably underway. The leader of the team at Lawrence Livermore Lab that found the “fingerprint,” Benjamin Santer, helped write the summary of this report, and he was deeply hurt when a few skeptics attacked not only the statement but his personal scientific integrity. (By 2006, when the warming had progressed considerably farther and the computer models were much improved, his judgment was confirmed. A thorough analysis concluded that there was scarcely a 5% chance that anything but humans had brought the changes observed in many regions of the world.) ”
Weart is here gabbling on about a ‘fingerprint’, but coyly doesn’t say what the ‘fingerprint’ is. Can any of the cognoscenti explain which fingerprint Weart is talking about, and why he doesn’t want to say what it is?
SJT: “If all you can whine about is the terminology. CO2 and it’s role in Global Warming in general, and AGW in particular, are distinct because CO2 has been involved in past natural warming events as a feedback, and sometimes as a forcing. The terms also do become interchangeable over time, it’s natural human usage of language to contract long phrases, you can’t have anything of substance to say.”
Terminology is not a trivial issue, especially when it causes confusion in the blank minds of untutored adolescents such as yourself SJT. This is especially the case with climate change debate, since it is the connection of ‘global warming’ which seems to be apparent to most members of the public, with CO2 as the necessary cause, that has been driving the political debate.
Weart’s book shows that the CO2 greenhouse gas paradigm caught on early in the inbred climatological scientific hothouse, and any initial skepticism was quickly brushed aside in the stampede to save the world. I cannot discuss the merits or otherwise of every paragraph of Weart’s book with you SJT. I do not have the time, and I certainly don’t have the expertise. There could be a thousand sins of omission and distortion in every sentence. Alternatively, every word of what the glorious world-saving scientists tell us could be true. However from what I have seen so far, I would consider deep skepticism to be the only proper and rational response to the current IPPC product.
Ultimately I am completely disinterested in the issue one way or another. At my age I’ll be long gone to a faraway place if or when the prophesied climate catastrophe hits. My basic motivations are moral and intellectual disgust for the product with which we are being served.
luke; we’ve had this conversation before about GISS’s alleged coverage of the poles whereas the satellites supposedly ‘make up’ data; it isn’t true and Christy has confirmed that the depth of the satellite algorithm errs on the side of depth so that it sometimes is measuring the temperature inside the ice which is warmer than the immediate atmospheric temperature so that a false higher temperature is recorded. In any event GISS has no accurate measurements of the poles; the Steig paper confirmed that in Antarctica and the Caitlin expedition confirmed that in the Arctic; did any of those fools survive and have they been committed? The simple fact is that GISS is an outlier;
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/rss-uah-giss-comparison/
Unsubstantiated hand waving Coho. Seems that 28,000 papers on species, behaviour, breeding and phenology are also denying the denialists thermometer interpretations.
BTW – incredibly high August temps up this way – but how can this be is we’re heading into an ice age?
Heat records dropping in NT, Queensland and NSW
Brett Dutschke, Sunday August 16, 2009 – 20:36 EST
Record August heat has been affecting parts of the Northern Territory, Queensland and New South Wales this weekend with temperatures in the low-to-mid 30s, as much as 14 above average.
Alice Springs has had its longest run of 30-degree days in 68 years of August records, a total of seven. A cooler change moved through on Sunday afternoon. Monday’s maximum will be about average, 23.
Further east, Cunnamulla in the Queensland Maranoa, broke a 102 year August record on Sunday by reaching 34 degrees, 13 above average. Elsewhere in southern Queensland, Thargomindah and St George also broke records a little over a decade old by peaking at 35 and 33 degrees respectively.
In NSW on Sunday, Lightning Ridge, Bourke and Walgett and Bega all broke August records which were at least 10 years old.
On Monday the extreme heat will be forced across to northeastern NSW and southeastern Queensland by gusty northwesterly winds ahead of a cooler change. A few thunderstorms will also form near the change and may generate damaging winds.
The change has been raising dust over a large area of western and northern NSW and western Queensland, reducing visibility in Birdsville to 1000 metres on Sunday.
– Weatherzone
© Weatherzone 2009
Seems our friend the PIG is still acting up.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/antarctica-pine-island-glacier-melting-four-times-faster-than-10-years-ago.php
The spatial and temporal evolution of Pine Island Glacier thinning, 1995 – 2006.
D.J.Wingham1, D.W. Wallis1, and A. Shepherd2*
1Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, Department of Earth Sciences, University
College London, London, United Kingdom
2Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, School of Geosciences, University of
Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
*Now at School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
We use ERS-2 and ENVISAT satellite radar altimetry to examine spatial and temporal
changes in the rate of thinning of the Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica, during the
period 1995 to 2008. We show that the pattern of thinning has both accelerated and
spread inland to encompass tributaries flowing into the central trunk of the glacier.
Within the 5,400 km2 central trunk, the average rate of volume loss quadrupled from 2.6
± 0.3 km3 yr-1 in 1995 to 10.1 ± 0.3 km3 yr-1 in 2006. The region of lightly grounded ice
at the glacier terminus is extending upstream, and the changes inland are consistent with
the effects of a prolonged disturbance to the ice flow, such as the effects of ocean-driven
melting. If the acceleration continues at its present rate, the main trunk of PIG will be
afloat within some 100 years, six times sooner than anticipated.
And frankly I’ll take Tamino’s word for it over the denialists any day. e.g. http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/giss-ncdc-hadcru/ – what issue !!!
“– what issue!!!”
The classic pose of the bureaucrat in CYA mode.
The Arctic ice is recovering nicely, the great droughts were just another scare, temperatures are not doing anything special, the seas are not rising abnormally, the oceans are not acidifying, and AGW engorged bureaucrats are still pushing rubbish.
Yes, ‘what issue!!!’
SJT wrote:
Your ignorance is showing again, SJT. Fact is, when you develop a new statistical technique, you apply it to data sets with known properties and publish a paper on the technique, how it works and what the pitfalls of using it may be. Then, once you have a well characterised method with known properties, you apply it to “novel” data, such as temperature or stock market time series. This system is very well established in the statistics literature. But, as ever, that’s not how we do things in climate science – oh no. What Mann et al did was “develop” their own new statistical technique directly from the data they were analysing – so no-one knew exactly how it worked and what the pitfalls of using it might be, and the method used was not disclosed for several years and even then only from demands from the US Senate!
Further more, as with many such “proxy reconstructions” there are numerous other issues such as (but not limited to):
* using correlation as a selection method, then using correlation as the “verification” method. (IOW data mining without applying the caveats and confidence limits appropriate to such techniques)
* using “strip-bark pine” tree ring series that the original compiler of the series suggested, in a published paper no less, showed evidence of CO2 fertilsation (such trees have since been recommended by the NAS to be “avoided” for use in such reconstructions, BTW)
* using methods that produce the same result using trendless red noise in place of real data
* failure to report adverse statistical results that they had calculated
Now all this would be bad enough, but to have such an unprofessional, sloppy and downright deceptive paper over-turn decades of work and hundreds of published papers based on historical facts and appear as the “poster child” of AGW in IPCC reports is, is…. disgusting is the only transliteral word I can use!
Oh, and SJT, you will notice that Josh/Eli once again either changes the subject or refuses to answer when the flaws in his arguement are pointed out to him. Of course, that “doesn’t matter” either, does it?
Neil ol child, there are BUILDINGS full of tapes. These tapes represent data taken when hard drives were 5K$ US for 5 megabytes IF THEY EXISTED AT ALL AT THE TIME. The cost of copying the data to new media would exceed the budgets of NASA and NOAA combined. Your ignorance would be amusing if it were not coupled to aggressive self regard. Shove it.
Josh/Eli you great fool – go back to RC and your own blog where you and your sycophants can elide anyone who dares to question your wisdom. Your unvalidated models are useless, your confirmation bias is anathema to science, and your refusal to answer inconvenient questions is more telling with every passing day.
In short, we are about to spend trillions of dollars globally – surely several hundred million spent ensuring we have not made a mistake is a worthwhile spend. And if AGW alarmists are right, then surely this data would support your claims! So if you are so certain, you should be pushing to get this data in the open where evereyone can examine it. But then, open data and methods will only “confuse” us plebs, won’t they? Will you cry “We are the experts on climate, why don’t you believe us?”, while simultaneously ignoring experts in stats that tell you you have made a mistake, as Mann, Stieg, Hansen and co have done and continue to do?
Free the code, free the data, free the debate. If you truely care, and truely believe we are in danger, prove your case and don’t forget to show your work – anything less is unacceptable with peoples lives, lifestyles and livelyhoods at stake.
luke; nobody said the WA wasn’t an issue; but the warm descending water of the oceanic conveyor belt [to use gore’s terminology] is a compounding factor on the WA where it strikes first before descending under and around the remainder of the Antarctic; AGW states that this will be aggravated by a weakening of the Walker circulation [and I don’t know if you have any further papers on this because the Power and Smith effort and Vecchi and Soden are taking a pizzling lately] which is problematic. What is probable is that ocean heat flux has reversed in 1998 and if the WA ocean is a net heat emitter than that too will be ascerbating the WA melt while further cooling the East;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/17/evidence-that-ocean-net-heat-flow-is-connected-with-climate-shifts-co2-not-correlated/#more-10022
“Free the code, free the data, free the debate. If you truely care, and truely believe we are in danger, prove your case and don’t forget to show your work – anything less is unacceptable with peoples lives, lifestyles and livelyhoods at stake.”
The debate has been going on for over a century, using the proven and successful scientific method. The current argument is not over the data or the debate. This website is a perfect example of what is happening, it is about creating doubt and fear, and presenting patent non-scientific abuse and ignorance as evidence in an effort to muddy the waters.
SJT wrote:
This current thread, despite Josh Halpern’s attempt to derail it over “massive amiunts of data”, is about HADCRU data – data that they claim they don’t have any more, can’t pass on to anyone, despite the fact they already have, but it doesn’t matter because it’s freely available on the ‘net. Yes, it’s terribly confusing – they claim, in the very same FOI response, *all* of those things!
Something we can agree on I see – although not for the same reasons, I’m sure. Tell me – how soon must we act to “save the planet”? I ask because James Hansen said we only have 10 years – in 1988.
dribble “Can any of the cognoscenti explain which fingerprint Weart is talking about, and why he doesn’t want to say what it is?”
This link provides an amateur assessment which is as good as any I have seen. It refers the reader to the IPCC signature diagrams on page 675 of the provided link which show a ‘hot spot’ in the tropical troposphere. The hot spot was predicted by models and has never been found. Enough said.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080928102819AAN7L0R
My personal take is that the IPCC are trying to establish a warmer atmosphere to get around the present situation which contravenes the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. A cooler atmosphere warmed by a warmer surface cannot warm the surface to a temperature higher than it was warmed by solar radiation. That can only happen in a model programmed by a mathematician or the likes.
cohenite “…whereas the satellites supposedly ‘make up’ data; it isn’t true and Christy has confirmed that the depth of the satellite algorithm errs on the side of depth …”
Coho…I think John Christy is one of the most serious scientists in climate science today. I like the guys honesty, his skepticism, and his willingness to investigate his own data objectively. He just tells it like it is and he’s completely on top of his discipline. It’s a real shame that the AGW crowd is taking such cheap shots at a man of his integrity, and going out of their way to discredit him.
Luke “Alice Springs has had its longest run of 30-degree days in 68 years of August records, a total of seven”.
Luke…why don’t you try using a bit of that grey matter between your ears? What the heck does record temperatures at Alice Springs have to do with CO2 warming? The conservative estimate for most models is no more than 2 C average warming in the next 100 years, and the most likely warming from a doubling of CO2 is no more than 1 C.
The heat waves you are refering to have nothing to do with CO2. They are about changes in convective wind currents and cloud action that carries the heat off. We have the same thing locally in Canada. Recently, we had the hottest day in Vancouver ever. It went up to about 32 C. It broke the record from 1960, when the mercury hit 31 C. What caused that 31 C temperature 50 years ago?
The local weather office did not mention CO2 warming, they blamed it on a change in the direction of winds, which normally come off the Pacific. Those cooler winds lower the temperature in Vancouver by blowing off the heat. When the records were set, warmer winds were coming into Vancouver from the interior and that was holding the heat in. I’d be willing tio bet, that if someone with a bit of brain power looked at the situation in Alice Springs, the records would be found to have been caused by a change in wind patterns.
Lindzen has pointed out that solar radiation would heat the Earth’s surface in some places to 72 C if it were not for convection and cloud action. I recently visited the hottest spot in Canada, where tempertures taken directly in the Sun rose to 56 C. That about 150 miles northeast of us and a bit inland. That’s when the record was set in Vancouver, and our current temperature is 22 C. Why is it 10 C lower? The other day it was down to 16 C. Has the CO2 blown away?
The AGW theory is based almost entirely on radiative heat transfer. Any weatherman will tell you most heat is moved by conduction, convection and evapouration. There’s even the old phenomenon that hot air rises, to be replaced by cooler air. That’s what cools the surface, and when those processes are interrupted, by say a change in the ocean oscillation, things tend to heat up, or cool down. The change in sign of the PDO is probably messing with Alice Springs.
You’re welcome, in advance.
So Gordon – now denialists are only allowing certain types of temperature rise as evidence. Golly gee Coho – so even if the world warms up – it’s not happening. Gadzooks !
“I think John Christy is one of the most serious scientists in climate science today. I like the guys honesty, his skepticism, and his willingness to investigate his own data objectively.”
barf – “ooooo – John I want to have your lovechild – oooooo” swoon …
How utterly bogus – based on what sample size Hunter –
Gordon Robertson, SJT and Cohenite are exactly the same weight, 181.4 kg. That’s right folks, by an amazing co-incidence, they all weigh the same.
Anyone who wishes to dispute this assertion must provide
– a calibration certificate for the scales, certified as traceable to the National Measurement Laboratory
– a table of weights of each person, taken at hourly intervals for a minimum of three months to ensure there is no trendline nor cherry-picking of data
– statutory declarations from eye-witnesses of my choice, to certify that the weights in the table are in fact the weights of Gordon Robertson, SJT and Cohenite.
If this data and copies of the necessary documents are not made freely available on this web site by close of buiness on Friday, my assertion is proved.
And muscle weighs more than lard and an alien from Saturn will be denser still; I believe little will is from Saturn, while Gordon, being from Canada, will be just changing into his heavier winter coat but will still be in prime condition from his summer foraging and so be at his maximum seasonal weight.
Weart’s ‘fingerprint’ paragraph as quoted above would have to one of the more garbled paragraphs I’ve read. Although it initially appears to refer to the now defunct tropical hot spot, I’m not sure that is actually the case. I think Weart is just using ‘fingerprint’ in a general sense that everywhere a climate scientist looks, he amazingly finds likely but uncertain evidence for CO2 induced warming.
According to Wikipedia, the Science & Environmental Policy Project (Singer’s group) in 1996 accused Santer of altering Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC report on the science of climate change, deleting phrases that suggested scientific doubts about human influences on climate to make the report conform to the IPCC Summary for Policymakers. Santer’s reply was ‘Thats OK, its within the rules”.
“During the 1980s, many scientists came to believe that the Earth was getting warmer. But that said nothing about the cause. A search got underway for “fingerprints” — specific patterns of climate that would point to the greenhouse effect (or point away from it, to some other cause). As one example, both computer models and simple reasoning declared that when gases in mid-atmosphere blocked radiation coming up from the surface, that would leave the stratosphere above the gases cooler. By 1988, “a number of intriguing candidates are appearing that might be part of a fingerprint,” a Science magazine report said, but “no one is claiming a certain identification of the greenhouse signal.”(97)”
The “fingerprint” is a warming troposphere but cooling stratosphere. If the sun was the cause of the warming, the stratosphere would be warming too. The “hot spot” controversy is one that is entirely manufactured by denialists who misunderstand the science.
“Weart’s ‘fingerprint’ paragraph as quoted above would have to one of the more garbled paragraphs I’ve read. Although it initially appears to refer to the now defunct tropical hot spot, I’m not sure that is actually the case. I think Weart is just using ‘fingerprint’ in a general sense that everywhere a climate scientist looks, he amazingly finds likely but uncertain evidence for CO2 induced warming.”
A ‘fingerprint’ is something that uniquely identifies a factor in some event. There can be multiple causes for the earth to warm, by saying that a cause can identified by some unique aspect of the warming, you have a ‘fingerprint’, something that this cause has that others don’t. In the case of AGW, a cooling stratosphere is one such ‘fingerprint’.
So where is your hot spot over the tropics SJT? This is supposed to be one of the key “signatures/ fingerprints” of co2 warming, and it has not happened…does this null and void the hypothesis/ theory?
The ‘hot spot’ is a furphy. The tropical troposphere has warmed, and cooled, the long term trend is up. The controversy is manufactured by denialists who are once again cherry picking short term events and extrapolating them to long term trends. The ‘signature’ is that while the tropical troposhphere has warmed, the stratosphere has cooled. The sun won’t do that, it will warm both, for example.
Luke “So Gordon – now denialists are only allowing certain types of temperature rise as evidence”.
I bet when you play footie, you have your goals on wheels, so when the other team kicks the ball, you just roll the goals out of the way. The entire IPCC and AGW paradigms are based on CO2. It’s called Anthropogenic Global Warming, meaning that humans are increasing temperatures by increasing CO2.
Recently, SJT has begun implying other factors are involved, and it seems you are too. Is this from something new at RC? That was tried in HIV/AIDS goal post moving. Luc Montagnier, the Frenchman who first claimed he found HIV, the cause of AIDS, or so he implied, changed his mind shortly thereafter, claiming there would have to be co-factors involved because HIV could not cause AIDS while acting alone. Unfortunately, a Yank scientist, Robert Gallo, who once claimed that cancer was caused by a virus, and that he had found it, whined very loudly that he had in fact discovered HIV first.
After the dust settled, the medical community agreed to let them be co-founders, although the Nobel committee later recognized only Montagnier. I say unfortunately because once the Yanks got involved, there was no modifying the theory, as Montagnier had suggested. Today, they are still looking for a mysterious virus, although there are people like yourself who insist HIV is not the only cause of AIDS. It’s a short leap from there to where the skeptics stand.
In climate modeling, they could not get their models to read correctly so they introduced co-factors, such as aerosols. Actually, CO2 was introduced for the same reason. Their math was out and they needed a co-factor to increase the temperature. With respect to aerosols, the theory went that the atmosphere was not as warm as the models had predicted, so something must be cooling it. Aha…they clapped their hands gleefully…that’s it. Aerosols are blocking the solar radiation and cooling the atmosphere.
Sounds good, eh? Unfortunately, the NH has far more aerosol production than the SH and the NH is warmer. Oops!! Well, better not let science get in the way of a good theory, so they kept the aerosol cooling theory.
Which is it, Luke? Does CO2 cause the warming or does it come from natural sources? I see you guys slowly moving the goal posts to change sides but we have seen you.
SJT “The tropical troposphere has warmed, and cooled, the long term trend is up”.
B-b-b-b-but…SJT…the satellites clearly show that the tropical lower troposphere is one constant in the warming/cooling confusion. Look for yourself:
http://climate.uah.edu/25yearbig.jpg
Most of the tropics are in the range -0.1 C to +0.1 C…over 25 years. Now look up in the Arctic and down in the Antarctic and see where the real action is….most of it in the dead of winter.
Where are you getting your figures, from Gavin Schmidt’s model?
Ozone depletion also causes stratospheric cooling, but I dont dispute co2 would cause cooling in teh stratosphere so we would expect to see some I agree. But the IPCC and the AGW theory do from my understanding call for a warming in the upper troposphere So all those debates about measurement error ( the excuse given by warmers to excuse its absence) and water evaporation trapping more heat, have been a figment of “sceptics” imaginations have they? The Ipcc and the models did not predict at the 8-12km lvl we would see warming greater than the surface? My memory must be much worse than I thought…… must just be the media who are all so sceptical and don t believe in AGW at all…….not!
SJT wrote:
Is that so? If you go here, you will find that Lucia (a “luke-warmer”) finds that IPCC AR4 suggests it is an anthropogenic signal and that RealClimate appear to believe otherwise. Consequently, on advise from the alarmists who post here regularly, I will accept the consensus position as espoused by IPCC rather than relying on a blog (RealClimate) – and that position is that this is a real “fingerprint” of AGW.
It’s apropos to point out that such a hot-spot has not been found – unless you happen to think that a model based on wind measurements from sondes is more accurate than actual thermometers mounted on the same sondes, in which case you can’t rule it out (but then again, neither can you show it to exist).
Oops! Looks like my html never made it. Try this link:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/who-expects-a-tropical-tropospheric-hot-spot-from-any-and-all-sources-of-warming/
“Which is it, Luke? Does CO2 cause the warming or does it come from natural sources? I see you guys slowly moving the goal posts to change sides but we have seen you.”
Both you drongo !
“In climate modeling, they could not get their models to read correctly so they introduced co-factors, such as aerosols. Actually, CO2 was introduced for the same reason.” what bulldust – jeez you’re a lying prick Roberston.
What a verballing dopey moron – like most denialist scum just making up shit to please themselves. Get off the blog you lying turd.
The denialists have caused a lot of confusion on this issue of the ‘hot spot’, since they don’t seem to understand even what they are claiming.
The “Signature” referred to by the IPCC is that while the troposphere warms, the stratosphere cools, which is clearly counter intuitive. This cannot happen if the sun is the cause of the warming, it would warm the both. Due to the way Greenhouse gases work, though, they will cause warming of the troposphere, and cooling of the stratosphere. This is one way to provide supporting evidence for the case for AGW.
The Realclimate link refers to something else, and it is a claim that the models don’t work. That is, there is warming measured in the troposphere around most of the globe, but not as much as predicted in the tropical troposphere. That is not a ‘signature’ issue, since there is warming, but the claim is not as much warming as predicted. There was an earlier claim by deniers that the models failed for the whole troposphere, but that was found to be a problem with the measurements. Not daunted, they came back with a much more restricted claim, that the models failed, but only for the tropical troposphere. Reaclimate dispute that, and they put their case much better than I can.
And if you look at Lucia’s thread, you can see confusion reigns, despite the attempts of a few to clear it up for her.
SJT wrote:
Seems pretty straightforward to me – a blog and IPCC disagree, and you keep telling me IPCC is sooo much better than a bunch of bloggers, right? Oh, and Lucia’s site also contains the proof that IPCC predictions are wrong at the 95% confidence interval.
The IPCC is better than a bunch of bloggers. Night follows day. What else is new.
Lucia proves that the IPCC predictions are wrong if you completely ignore what they actually claim they predict.
I don’t know why I’m bothering, reflex I suppose; little will says the THS is really the Stratosphere cooling;
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Stratosphere1278-1204.gif
Lambert and Colose say the THS is really the tropopause rising and so on and so forth; it’s like arguing with a fart, pardon the French.
An aptly named web site, is Junkscience.
“The last decade or so has been the hottest for ages”. LOL, did a third grader write that up?
You are a mighty warrior for climate change SJT. When you get to heaven I am sure you will be assigned many virgins. You should commit suicide now before they get too old.
I believe the Hot Spot Controversy can be summarized as follows:
1. The Hot Spot was originally touted as a ‘fingerprint’ for greenhouse gas warming by climate scientists.
2. The Hot Spot could not be discovered even after heroic data adjustment attempts by climate scientists.
3. The Hot Spot has now been downgraded by climate scientists, who now claim it was never claimed as a fingerprint by them in the first place.
4. The current data is insufficient to precisely say anything about the non-existence or otherwise of the Hot Spot.
5. Should data quality improve and the Hot Spot be actually discovered, it will again be touted as a ‘fingerprint’ of greenhouse gas warming by climate scientists. More likely it will be touted as ‘proof’ of greenhouse gas warming by climate scientists.
“1. The Hot Spot was originally touted as a ‘fingerprint’ for greenhouse gas warming by climate scientists.”
You still don’t get it, do you?
The ‘fingerprint’ is a cooling stratosphere while there is a warming troposphere. If the sun was the source of the warming, it would have warmed both. The stratosphere cooled, as predicted.
SJT wrote:
As cited by Lucia, IPCC AR4 defines the hot-spot as a fingerprint of AGW. RealClimate claims otherwise, but hey, they’re a blog, right? You don’t believe a blog over official IPCC reports, do you?
If you look at what IPCC publish, then you will see that Lucia is using their “best estimate” claims as published by IPCC and in fact gives them every benefit of the doubt. You know the document SJT – the one that is touted as the “best, most comprehensive” synthesis of peer reviewed science. And it’s pretty clear, as Lucia shows. So if this document is wrong on such basic science and concepts, it boggles the mind what else thay may have gotten wrong. And if they were not wrong, but just didn’t show error bars like they really should have, then they have been misleading – once again, if they are being misleading on such a basic issue, what else are they being misleading about? And which do you think it is, SJT? Did they make a mistake on the science, or were they being misleading?
“As cited by Lucia, IPCC AR4 defines the hot-spot as a fingerprint of AGW. ”
Lucia didn’t get it either, did she?
“Did they make a mistake on the science, or were they being misleading?”
False dichotomy. People find it hard to understand complex science that has been simplified in attempt to make it comprehensible. I still have no idea what string theory is getting at beyond the most basic explanations. The “Hot Spot” issue took me a while to understand.
The diagrams from the IPCC clearly show that the little blue area is an integral part of the ‘fingerprint’, but it is completely ignored. That is the cooling stratosphere. The argument not over whether or not there is warming in the arctic and temperate upper tropospheres either, they tried that one on and failed. The only argument is over the upper tropical troposphere, so out of the whole troposphere, the whole focus is on one segment. Realclimate argues that the upper tropical troposphere is warming withing the error bounds of the model predictions, and there is no debate that the stratosphere has cooled. It’s all a storm in a teacup.
Psst SJT, buzz on the street is that you are the hot favorite for the “Believer Most Unlikely to Succeed On A Skeptic Blog” 2009 Award.
SJT wrote:
Yeah, well RC also claim that climate is behaving within the error bounds of their models too – trouble is, their error bounds are derived, not from propogating all the errors of the calculation system, but from variations in model output from different models and different runs of models. As ever with RC, anything that rains on their parade is “wrong”, “misunderstood” or “doesn’t matter” – usually all three, in that order, as it becomes more and more obvious that their previous position is untennable. For example, the Steig paper – first, the complaints were “wrong”, then they “didn’t understand” what was done, now they have submitted a correction to their paper, but claim it “doesn’t matter” despite the fact that the stats used to show 80% of the antarctic warming and now show 50% is cooling!
Gavin from RC and Lucia have argued about what the appropriate “prediction” should be and what the appropriate error bounds should be. I certainly feel Lucia is correct to call IPCC AR4 multi-model projection mean as published by IPCC to be the “best guess” of the models – IPCC clearly thinks so too. And since they didn’t bother to show error bounds *at all*, using – as Lucia does – climate variability from real climate observations seems reasonable enough. Bear in mind that these are from the technical reports, not the summary for policy makers.
“Psst SJT, buzz on the street is that you are the hot favorite for the “Believer Most Unlikely to Succeed On A Skeptic Blog” 2009 Award.”
Once again, nothing.
“Yeah, well RC also claim that climate is behaving within the error bounds of their models too – trouble is, their error bounds are derived, not from propogating all the errors of the calculation system, but from variations in model output from different models and different runs of models. As ever with RC, anything that rains on their parade is “wrong”, “misunderstood” or “doesn’t matter” – usually all three, in that order, as it becomes more and more obvious that their previous position is untennable. For example, the Steig paper – first, the complaints were “wrong”, then they “didn’t understand” what was done, now they have submitted a correction to their paper, but claim it “doesn’t matter” despite the fact that the stats used to show 80% of the antarctic warming and now show 50% is cooling!”
I thought we were talking about the ‘signature’. Do you accept what the ‘signature’ is and what it isn’t now?
SJT, I’m quite happy to admit that I really don’t know much about the Hot Spot, although I’m inclined to be skeptical about whatever the Realclimate blog has to say about, since it is clearly run by people who are straightforward pathological liars. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll read up as much as I can about the Hot Spot controversy (this will take a few months at least), and if it is at all feasible, I will provide you with my at that stage slightly more informed opinion. We can take the argument further from there.
Meanwhile, my question was and still is what exactly is the fingerprint that Weart talks about in the following paragraph. What is your opinion? Also, perhaps you can advise us as to what Santer’s judgment had been confirmed about. Thanking you in advance.
From Weart (chapter on The Modern Temperature Trend)
“Pursuing this in a more sophisticated way, computer models predicted that greenhouse gases would cause a particular pattern of temperature change. It was different from what might be caused by other external influences, such as solar variations. The observed geographical pattern of change did in fact bear a rough resemblance to the computers’ greenhouse effect maps. “It is likely that this trend is partially due to human activities,” the researchers concluded, “although many uncertainties remain.” Even before it was published, the finding impressed the community of climate scientists. In an important 1995 report, the world’s leading experts offered the “fingerprint” as evidence that greenhouse warming was probably underway. The leader of the team at Lawrence Livermore Lab that found the “fingerprint,” Benjamin Santer, helped write the summary of this report, and he was deeply hurt when a few skeptics attacked not only the statement but his personal scientific integrity. (By 2006, when the warming had progressed considerably farther and the computer models were much improved, his judgment was confirmed. A thorough analysis concluded that there was scarcely a 5% chance that anything but humans had brought the changes observed in many regions of the world.) ”
Further to the above, lets clarify our terminology so that we are not confused. I would regard the words ‘fingerprint’, ‘pattern’ and ‘signature’ to all mean roughly the same thing in this context. If you would like to assign different meanings to each separate word, please advise.
Weart explains one ‘fingerprint’.
“However, “fingerprints” were found that pointed directly to greenhouse warming. One measure was the difference of temperature between night and day. Tyndall had pointed out more than a century back that basic physics declared that the greenhouse effect would act most effectively at night, as the gases impeded radiation from escaping into space. Statistics did show that it was especially at night that the world was warmer. ”
Fortunately, Weart provides good references for all his claims.
http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/PALE:ClassicArticles/GlobalWarming/Article20
http://onramp.nsdl.org/eserv/onramp:17391/Santer1995.pdf
Not something I’m going to undertsand all at once. 🙁
SJT wrote:
As Lucia notes:
She further quotes the text which says (as high-lighted in Lucia’s post):
and the sentence preceding it which says:
This is all very straightforward to me – and it directly contradicts the ramblings of the RC crowd on their blog here:http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/ where they say:
So, since IPCC and a blog disagree, I will do as you keep asking and accept IPCC over the rantings of activists on a blog and suggest that the tropical tropospheric hot-spot is a GHG signature.
However, if you insist – despite your previous protestations to the contrary – that I should accept a blog over IPCC reports, then I shall, in future, cite other blogs when I consider them authoritative on the subject at hand.
Oh – further to my previous post:
It is possible, I suppose, that RC are actually claiming that the models have the same response to warming regardless of the forcing, rather than suggesting that the real atmosphere responds this way. But since this also directly contradicts IPCC AR4 (as per my previous post), it’s probably not worth arguing about such semantic distinctions – both interpretations of the RC comment (how the models react to different forcings and how the real atmosphere reacts to different forcings) are contradicted by IPCC AR4 as I previously quoted.
SJT wrote:
Perhaps this is relevent? http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/08/evidence-that-global-temperature-trends.html
“So, since IPCC and a blog disagree, I will do as you keep asking and accept IPCC over the rantings of activists on a blog and suggest that the tropical tropospheric hot-spot is a GHG signature.”
Why are you ignoring the cooling stratosphere. That is what makes it a ‘signature’. If the warming was only due to the sun, the stratosphere would be warming too. That is what the models predicted.
“Perhaps this is relevent?”
No.
SJT the IPCC appears to use ‘tropospheric warming’, and ‘tropospheric warming + stratospheric cooling’ as two different ‘fingerprints’. See Table 9.4 in AR4 ch9.
I’ve been trying to read IPCC AR4 Chapter 9 for a squizz at the hot spot, but its tough going.
For example, Table 9.4A is described as a ‘A synthesis of climate change detection results’.
One of the ‘results’ is the statement that ‘Tropospheric warming is detectable and attributable to anthropogenic forcing (latter half of the 20th century)’. This ‘result’ is then described as having a likelihood of ‘Likely’.
The factors contributing to the likelihood assessment are given as:
“There has been robust detection and attribution of anthropogenic influence on tropospheric warming, which does not depend on including stratospheric cooling in the fingerprint pattern of response. There are observational uncertainties in radiosonde and satellite records. Models generally predict a relative warming of the free troposphere compared to the surface in the tropics since 1979, which is not seen in the radiosonde record (possibly due to uncertainties in the radiosonde record) but is seen in one version of the satellite record, although not others.”
So apart from the confusions between ‘results’ and ‘observations’, the IPCC say on the one hand that there has been ‘robust detection and attribution of anthropogenic influence on tropospheric warming’, then they say that the relative warming of the troposphere compared with the surface is not seen in the radiosonde record etc’
If you can sort out exactly what the bureaucratic drivel-writers are talking about you’re a better man than I am Gunga Din.
SJT Wrote:
Really? So a paper that has been accepted for publication in the peer reviewed literature that gives a good reason unrelated to GHG for an increase in nighttime minimum temperatures is not relevent to your claim:
? Care to explain why it’s not relevent, because it certainly looks like it is to me!
“If you can sort out exactly what the bureaucratic drivel-writers are talking about you’re a better man than I am Gunga Din.”
What you meant to say is that you don’t understand what they are writing.
It is a list of the supporting evidence for AGW. The particular quote you are referring to states that there is warming in the troposphere, without looking at the stratospheric cooling fingerprint issue. This evidence is a likely indicator that AGW is supported.
As for the radiosondes, look up RAOBCORE. The radiosondes were not designed for the precision neccesary for the climate researchers, so a lot of work has been put into correcting the data. If you think the correction is just part of a conspiracy, Douglass uses RAOBCORE data himself.
SJT: “What you meant to say is that you don’t understand what they are writing.”
Frankly SJT, I don’t think you do either. The drivel-writers on the one hand say ‘robust detection and attribution’, then back-pedal by saying that warming is “not seen in the radiosonde record (possibly due to uncertainties in the radiosonde record) but is seen in one version of the satellite record, although not others.”
Is the detection of the anthropogenic tropospheric warming signal ‘robust’ or not, thats really the issue. Do I think the correction is part of a conspiracy? Yes and no. Conspiracy is a bad word to use since it conjures up notions of conscious fraudulent activity. ‘Agenda’ is probably a more practical concept to use in this circumstance. The IPCC AGW believers consider their models to be correct, therefore data which does not support the models must be incorrect. This attitude might be reasonable, or it may be wrong. If however your agenda is to prove the models correct, then your scientific output is rightly or wrongly going to be skewed in this direction, particularly in dealing with something as nebulous and complex as climate. This is not a new concept put forward by AGW skeptics. It is part and parcel of how human beings operate. Establishment science is essentially a herd activity, so for all sorts of reasons the participants tend to follow the established paradigm. The Sherwood paper, which attempts to find the tropospheric warming by using wind velocity as a temperature proxy, might be considered a somewhat desperate example of this in practice.
Currently I have no idea of whether or not the actual evidence supports the claimed anthropogenic fingerprint of tropical tropospheric warming. I certainly would not trust what the IPCC or AGW believing scientists have to say about it on face value. I don’t think that the tropospheric warming issue is a trivial one. If it doesn’t exist as some claim then it seems likely that the modelled CO2 sensitivity is set too high. Unfortunately the reality is that AGW believing scientists are under no pressure to produce high quality answers that don’t suit their agenda.
SJT wrote:
Statistics did show that it was especially at night that the world was warmer.
All depends where the thermometers were situated, ever heard of a night storage radiator.
Bob UK wrote:
Indeed – or this: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/thermometer-years-by-latitude-warm-globe/
“The basis of the issue is that models produce an enhanced warming in the tropical troposphere when there is warming at the surface. This is true enough. Whether the warming is from greenhouse gases, El Nino’s, or solar forcing, trends aloft are enhanced.”
That is correct. They are specifically referring to the troposphere. If the warming is solar or GHG, the troposphere will show an enhanced warming in the tropical troposphere.
“These figures indicate that the modelled vertical and zonal averaged signature of the temperature response should depend on the forcings.”
They are talking about vertical response, that is, including the stratosphere. If you do that, you will see that the stratosphere will warm for solar forcing, but cool for greenhouse forcing.
The statements are consistent.
“Frankly SJT, I don’t think you do either. The drivel-writers on the one hand say ‘robust detection and attribution’, then back-pedal by saying that warming is “not seen in the radiosonde record (possibly due to uncertainties in the radiosonde record) but is seen in one version of the satellite record, although not others.””
I repeat, read up on RAOBCORE. The radiosondes are not very accurate.
SJT wrote:
This may be a valid interpretation, but if that is what they meant, the document is highly misleading given the shown plots – whether that is intentional or not is debateable.
True, although I suspect that estimates of temperature from actual thermometers are more accurate than temperature infered from wind sensors!