The Dog that Ate Global Warming

[there buster]

Quote:

The Dog Ate Global Warming

Interpreting climate data can be hard enough. What if some key data have been fiddled?

By Patrick J. Michaels

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.

In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”

Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations weren’t really designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were usually established at points of commerce, which tend to grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.

So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.

Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so 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?”

Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.

Then the story changed. In June 2009, Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster told Canadian researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same data. Despite having been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to present his analyses of millennial temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn’t have the data because he wasn’t an “academic.” So his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.

Faced with a growing number of such requests, Jones refused them all, saying that there were “confidentiality” agreements regarding the data between CRU and nations that supplied the data. McIntyre’s blog readers then requested those agreements, country by country, but only a handful turned out to exist, mainly from Third World countries and written in very vague language.

It’s worth noting that McKitrick and I had published papers demonstrating that the quality of land-based records is so poor that the warming trend estimated since 1979 (the first year for which we could compare those records to independent data from satellites) may have been overestimated by 50 percent. Webster, who received the CRU data, published studies linking changes in hurricane patterns to warming (while others have found otherwise).

Enter the dog that ate global warming.

Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:

Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. 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.

The statement about “data storage” is balderdash. They got the records from somewhere. The files went onto a computer. All of the original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s. I had all of the world’s surface barometric pressure data on one such tape in 1979.

If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?

[Woody]

Good Point. Thanks for the post there buster.

[olger]

Mojib Latif, a leading climate expert from Germany does an about face on Global warming.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Scientists+pull+about+face+global+warming/2010571/story.html

[Bravus]

Warming has not stopped. Watch this video and repeat as necessary:

http://www.bravus.com/blog/?p=1289

[Bravus]

Also, direct response to the claims made about Mojib Latif's speech:

http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2009/09...des-of-cooling/

Sorry, these last two posts are both in response to what Olger posted. Will get to the thread opening post in a bit.

[Bravus]

And there are, of course, NASA data and a vast array of other data going right back to 1880 that shows a massive warming trend (watch the video I posted again if you need to), so while it would be disappointing if some of the original data were lost (which the article by no means proves), it would *not* mean that warming is not occurring. All it would mean is some level of reduced precision in measuring it.

[there buster]

Quote:

going right back to 1880

LOL.

And just as the video claims it's a mistake to focus on the last decade, the church of global warming wants us to ignore trends that go farther back. we know the Earth has been warmer in the past-- no doubt due to ancient SUVs!-- and that CO2 concentrations were higher. We also know CO2 is a lagging indicator, not a leading one.

But, we'll soon be told that data no longer matters. when the resolution was centuries, and it seemed to support the church's view, it was important. Now that resolution is finer, and it undercuts the church's view, it's not good data.

And, back to the original post, why won't the "scientists" release their data? You'd think, if it supported their findings, they'd be happy to.

[olger]

Yeah. The same subjective presup that gave us Evilution now gets a flush over Global Warming. :)

og out

Ps. What hymbook does the Church of Global Warmin' use? (The Green Music Network ---> complete with New Moon Cave Concerts and Resonant Body Experience workshops.)

[Bravus]

Hmm. If you were to ask me to present the data from a study I conducted in Perth about 9 years ago, I couldn't. I could maybe reconstruct some of it from the graphs in the published papers, but the raw data are lost. These things happen, mainly due to the vagaries of electronic storage - crashes, accidents and changes of medium. I regret that, and it's not great for science... but it's the truth. It's possible that these guys have the 'cleaned up' data, with various algorithms run through it to weed out anomalous values. They may have lost the original raw data. That's unfortunate but true. The question then would be whether their clean-up algorithms were so flawed as to make the surviving data useless, or not.

But you went off into ranting about the (non-existent) 'church', and didn't address the point I made: the CRU data are not the only data. It's got nothing to do with resolution, or with overturning results. There are plenty of data sets other than the CRU data. So your original post (and the article it quoted) over-stated the importance of the problem - if indeed it exists.

[there buster]

As you are fond of saying: Reading Comprehension 101.

The problem is the ever-changing story. They didn't claim to have lost it, at first. They didn't want someone to "try and find something wrong with it."

Then they freely gave the "lost" data to Georgia Tech's Peter Webster. Next, faced with a FOI request, they once again didn't claim to have lost it, they denied it because the requester "wasn't an academic." So when "an academic" requested it, they turned him down, too.

Please note: Through all this, they haven't claimed to have lost the data.

Next, they (still not claiming it was lost) made spurious claims of confidentiality (which apparently hadn't prevented them from sharing the data with the afermentioned Peter Webster).

If the information actually supports their conclusions, you'd think they'd be eager to publish it.

It all looks more like dogma that must not be questioned, rather than science that can be verified. Hence the church label.

Quote:

Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so 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?”

Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.

Then the story changed. In June 2009, Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster told Canadian researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same data. Despite having been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to present his analyses of millennial temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn’t have the data because he wasn’t an “academic.” So his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.

Faced with a growing number of such requests, Jones refused them all, saying that there were “confidentiality” agreements regarding the data between CRU and nations that supplied the data. McIntyre’s blog readers then requested those agreements, country by country, but only a handful turned out to exist, mainly from Third World countries and written in very vague language.

[fccool]

The problem with the Global Warming is not the data really, but the conclusions drawn. And the typical logical fallacy is made, just like in case with AIDS. I.e. HIV causes AIDS because of coincidental residency of that virus (no matter how small the concentration is) in the host that develops AIDS.

Likewise, the idea that CO2 concentration drives the current warming ... is a conclusion from a coincidental factor. There's no evaluation of the possible inverse relationship, neither there are other possible causes. Why?

Find out what happens to any researcher who would apply for a grant to invalidate the premise of the non-C02 related warming... or non-HIV related AIDS, or chemo-tharapy induced deaths.

Yes, we need cleaner fuel and lifestyles that produce less waste... The crime is still a problem, poor health is still a problem, and poverty is still a problem... and after trillions poured into research grants (much of which go to figuring out how to kill people faster).

[Guest]

That's true.

[Bravus]

There's this thing called 'evidence'...

[Guest]

I couldn't sleep so I got back up. What evidence?

Don't tell me you believe in that too. (Global warming hype/hoax)

[Bravus]

I believe in evidence.

On climate change, if you need to ask 'what evidence?', there's nothing I can tell you.

[Woody]

Now that global warming has been proven to be a hoax ... I would have hoped that we could have moved on.

[there buster]

Quote:

I believe in evidence.

LOL. Global warming is based not on evidence, but on computer models, which have not predicted what is. Yet we are asked to believe what they tell us about the future.

[Bravus]

The fact that the great majority of the hottest years since records began have been in the past decade is not a computer model.

[Bravus]

And yes, it has been hotter in the past - but only the distant past, tens of thousands of years ago (which most people here don't believe existed). Since the rise of human civilisation (or the creation of man, whichever you prefer), the current warm period is unprecedented. When it was hotter in the past, we weren't trying to find food and water for 6 billion people...

[there buster]

Quote:

hottest years since records began have been in the past decade

This gets funnier and funnier. It's been cooling in the last decade. Oh, and "since records began" sounds like a long time, but-- not really.

And, one of the points of contention is whether the data have been "cooked" -- in more ways than one.

And the data to support all this hocus-pocus, well, that's what the dog ate.

[bonnie]

The fact that the great majority of the hottest years since records began have been in the past decade is not a computer model.

I don't think this is true. Those that lived thru the 30's might take exception to what you are saying.

1931, 1934, 1938 and 1939 were some of the warmest on record.

Only three years are out of the past decade.1998,1999,2006

What caused the heat wave in the 30's?? What has caused the weather in much if the US to be cooler than usual

[olger]

Hmm. If you were to ask me to present the data from a study I conducted in Perth about 9 years ago, I couldn't. I could maybe reconstruct some of it from the graphs in the published papers, but the raw data are lost. These things happen, mainly due to the vagaries of electronic storage - crashes, accidents and changes of medium. I regret that, and it's not great for science... but it's the truth. It's possible that these guys have the 'cleaned up' data, with various algorithms run through it to weed out anomalous values. They may have lost the original raw data. That's unfortunate but true. The question then would be whether their clean-up algorithms were so flawed as to make the surviving data useless, or not.

But you went off into ranting about the (non-existent) 'church', and didn't address the point I made: the CRU data are not the only data. It's got nothing to do with resolution, or with overturning results. There are plenty of data sets other than the CRU data. So your original post (and the article it quoted) over-stated the importance of the problem - if indeed it exists.

I enjoy a rant once in a while.

og out

[Bravus]

bonnie - the US is not the world. 'global' warming means just that. Local areas will be warmer and colder.

[Bravus]

And there buster, now you're just not telling the truth. You have watched the video. You *know* that the claim 'it has been cooling in the past decade' is false. Why continue to make it?

[bonnie]

bonnie - the US is not the world. 'global' warming means just that. Local areas will be warmer and colder.

Explain Greenland of centuries ago then?