What is striking about Andy Pitman and Lisa Alexander’s response to the articles in The Australian, on The Conversation, is how intellectually weak it is, and how little content they have after we remove the logical fallacies. It’s argument from authority, circular reasoning, and strawmen. Hail the Gods (and don’t look over there)! They don’t question Jennifer Marohasy’s remarkable figures, they don’t even mention them at all, nor use the names “Rutherglen”, “Amberley” or “Bourke” –how revealing.
And these are the points at issue. Long cooling trends at supposedly excellent sites had been homogenized and transformed into warming trends. Rutherglen is the kind of station other stations dream to be: it has stayed in the same place according to the official documents, isn’t affected by the heat from urban growth either and is similar to its neighbors. Other stations might be adjusted to be more like it. Instead the BOM has a method that detected “unrecorded” site moves at Rutherglen by studying unnamed stations somewhere in the region. Awkwardly, someone who used to work there says the thermometer didn’t move. Hmm. Would a thinking person ask for more details and an explanation? Not if you are director of an ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science or a Chief Investigator of the same institution. This is apparently how Excellent Climate Centres work. The thermometers and trends for Rutherglen were wrong all along, off by nearly 2 degrees for 70 years. Luckily the experts finally arrived to fix them, but using thermometers that might have been hundreds of kilometers away?
It seems a bit magical. But Pitman and Alexander offer no scientific or physical reason why it makes sense for long cooling trends in raw data to be dramatically changed in stations which are supposed to be our best. Nor do they even try to explain the BOM’s lack of curiosity of decades of older data at Bourke either. Perhaps there are reasons years of historic data can’t be analyzed and combined to look at long term trends, but if there is, Pitman and Alexander don’t know it and apparently don’t care too much either.
Instead we hear that homogenization is used all over the world, but in lots of different forms, and sometimes not at all.
Data homogenisation techniques are used to varying degrees by many national weather agencies and climate researchers around the world. Although the World Meteorological Organization has guidelines for data homogenisation, the methods used vary from country to country, and in some cases no data homogenisation is applied.
Is this supposed to make us feel confident that the Australian BOM uses the “right” version, and no one should even ask questions about the details? Skeptical scientists (as opposed to Directors of Excellence) have been asking for these details of individual site adjustments for years. The BOM could have provided the answers and silenced the critics long ago. Instead skeptics were delighted when Graham Lloyd at The Australian finally managed to elicit three paragraphs of details on three sites. Pop the Champagne, eh?
To answer the critics Pitman draws on the elite gods of ClimateScienceTM to help him. Unlike other fields of science where one expert can explain things to another scientist, in BOM-science they use, wait for it, “complex methods” that apparently can’t be discussed. Besides Blair Trewin has written a “comprehensive” article. It must be good. Likewise, annointed Climate Elves called Itsi’s are allowed to talk about which homogenisation method might be better than others, but scientists outside the fairy circle are not.
Perhaps it’s understandable that Pitman and Alexander didn’t bother explaining any of the details — they are writing for The Conversation, after all. It’s not like it’s an educated high level audience…
Who is cherry picking?
The handy thing about climate parameters is there are plenty of trend-cherries to pick: there are maxima, mean, minima, and extremes, and they are grouped by region or state, or national memes. Hot days can be defined lots of ways: over 40C, 37C, 35C, or the 10th percentile above the monthly mean.
Luckily for Pitman and Alexandra, there was at least one example from these permutations and combinations that showed cooler trends after homogenization. That little category is “Trends in the frequency of hot days over Australia – unadjusted data using all temperature stations that have at least 40 years of record available for Australia from the GHCN-Daily data set.”
Skeptical scientists like Ken Stewart instead just looked at big basic parameters like the average minima across the country of 100 plus stations and found the adjustments warmed the trends by 50%.
This climate has a circular trend?
Circular Reasoning Prize for the day goes to this line, bolded:
If the Bureau didn’t do it (homogenisation), then we and our fellow climatologists wouldn’t use its data because it would be misleading. What we need are data from which spurious warming or cooling trends have been removed, so that we can see the actual trends.
What “actual” trends? Since the Models of Excellence are not-so-excellent at predicting the climate, this translates to saying that broken models don’t work with unhomogenized data. (Could be a clue there, you think?)
Apparently the editors of The Conversation find argument from authority and circular reasoning appealing. (Forgive me, what well-trained academic wouldn’t?)*
The mismatch in the PR
There is another layer to this. Even if the adjustments can be physically justified with documents, the grand uncertainty in Australian datasets is never conveyed in BOM press releases which announce records that may rely on adjustments of up to 2 degrees to temperatures recorded 70 years ago. Even if the adjustments are justified, isn’t it important for the public to know how complicated it is and how fickle most of these records are when they may disappear with the next incarnation of “high quality” data?
Strawmen to mislead?
Andy Pitman is keen to suggest skeptical scientists make false accusations:
The Bureau has provided the details of how it is done, despite facing accusations that it has not been open enough.
But skeptics accuse the BOM of not documenting individual site specific explanations. In return, Andy Pitman keeps that trend going by responding to questions about Amberley, Rutherglen and Bourke without mentioning, er… Amberley, Rutherglen or Bourke.
Peer review makes scientific arguments “Valid”?
It doesn’t matter if skeptics are logical and have empirical evidence, what matters to Andy Pitman and Lisa Alexander is whether those ideas have been passed by two anonymous unpaid reviewers.
Valid critiques of data homogenisation techniques are most welcome. But as in all areas of science, from medicine to astronomy, there is only one place that criticisms can legitimately be made. Anyone who thinks they have found fault with the Bureau’s methods should document them thoroughly and reproducibly in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. This allows others to test, evaluate, find errors or produce new methods. This process has been the basis of all scientific advances in the past couple of centuries and has led to profoundly important advances in knowledge.
All scientific advances in the last two centuries? Tell that to Newton, Einstein, Watson and Crick. They were not peer reviewed. On the other hand these 120 scientific advances were peer reviewed, that is until someone realized they were computer generated gibberish, and un-published them.
Is that more the type of Excellence our ARC strives for?
————————————-
*Apologies to the exceptions who survive in academia.
As a technical expert I have done ‘due diligence’ on numerous exploration and mining projects throughout the world for both banks and brokerage houses.
One of the things I have learned is that if something cannot be explained simply and/or someone deliberately tries to impress you with the use of long words and an aloof manner, then they either do not know what they are talking about or they have something to hide.
BOM clearly has something to hide and so arrogantly tries to dismiss its detractors by implying they are not smart, or trained, enough to understand the subject.
Keep digging, the smell is not going to get any better, until accurate data is obtained, as opposed to homogenised data, which is processed with sufficient bias to generate the required result demanded by the climate collective.
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At least I learned one thing today and that is, there is something which all Australians should be proud about, although some might be forgiven for thinking, “Only a bunch of pointless third rate bureaucrats would dare call themselves this.”
ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science
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And it only costs taxpayers A$3 million per year!
Imagine what Jo could do with just 10% of this money.
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– where intelligence is denied.
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It travels in the same way that we call red heads ‘bluey’.
So the name aptly fits.
This also fits with the Gore Effect, colder wetter conditions abound those who proclaim warmer dryer conditions. In this case it is just excrement is the red head and excellence is the ‘Bluey’.
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I’ve always been wary of any institution with a name that might have been lifted from a Superman comic. Human Rights Commission, United Nations etc. “Centre of Excellence” is very much one of those.
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Another good one, Jo Nova.
What you might have also mentioned is that this government funded “Conversation” employs a bunch of people and got an initial $6 million funding in start-up money. http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/cash_for_conversation/
With all this money sloshing from the public pursue, you would think they might do us a favour, like some peer-review of Bourke, Amberley and Rutherglen… rather than just dish out more opinion.
Nevermind, we will keep serving up facts as we work through the list of homogenised stations. Lots more to come.
In the meantime, Jo has never enjoyed any government funding. So, please contribute by way of the tip jar. Be generous. Like me, she often works through the night.
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Your BOM is using the same tactics as our NOAA; “Who you gonna believe, us or your lying eyes?”
Keep on them. I learned eons ago as a child that a lie must be memorized; truth does not. Drunk or sober, truth remains.
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Jennifer,
I must disagree with you about the need for peer review. Homogenization is a procedure, not new science. There should be clear rules laid down for that procedure. Any adjustments should be clearly documented, with audits to make sure they are complied with. These rules could be made more objective over time, so eventually, by stating criteria for homogenization, the size of the adjustments can be calculated.
However, the default should always be the raw data unless there is good reason to adjust.
If data is properly compiled, it should be possible to apply new homogenization criteria to that data quite simply.
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Kevin Marshall.
Agreed. There should be a transparent procedure that others can replicate. But this is not inconsistent with peer-review?
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Peer review, as I understand it, is concerned with evaluating something unique. To be published in a journal it should claim to be “new knowledge”. Evaluation needs to be by experts in the field, who have an up-to-date awareness of the literature. Clearly defined rules for peer review are not possible.
With a defined set of rules and set procedures, it is possible train an reasonably numerate person to do the basic leg-work in auditing homogenization adjustments. The clearer the rules, the greater the consistency.
It is similar (but not so broad and complex) as auditing a set of accounts. With both, there might be choices of which rule (e.g. depreciation, bad debt provisions), but once the policy is set the audit is on the adherence to that policy.
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Kevin,
You bring up an interesting point. If climate science had to be audited the way a public corporation has to withstand scrutiny I wonder how many of them would now be in jail. Even the conspiracy between Enron and Arthur Anderson to hide the cooked books finally collapsed.
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I think that you both are right in part, and in part wrong. “Peer” review is definitionally a review by equals. However, in a “multidisciplinary” science like climatology, “peers” can take on connotations that actively encourage clique formation and defense. Quite often you can see the argument posed that experts in any one of the contributing subiscplines are not “peers,” even though the scientists of a field like climatology are often not expert at ANY field contributing to their discipline. Their physics is narrowly focused and lacks foundational knowledge, their mathematics can be outright amateurish, they are frequently profoundly ignorant of key empirical evidence such as historical geological data that overtly falsifies their “theory.”
If you consider the response of scientists – well “scientists” – like Mann and Jones to McIntyre and McKitrick’s analysis of the “hockeystick” mathematics and statistical methods, you see this in action. Both McIntyre and McKitrick are far more experienced and capable as statistical analysts than the authors of MBH98. They are easily “peers,” yet the defenders of the hockey stick chose to argue they were not “climate scientists” and therefore not qualified to review or comment on their work. Likewise the phrase “experts in the field” begs questions about defining experts in a field. Presumably experts should be “peers.” Additionally, transparency MUST extend to reviews – who are the reviewers? If the reviewers are anonymous, then the “peer” status is readily questioned. As it is, the anonymity of peer reviewers assured by many journals permits a secretive and potentially biased process of “pal” review. This problem is not simply limited to climate studies. It is nearly pervasive in science at present. A search of retractions and withdrawals reveals how bad this is.
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A different viewpoint from Berkeley Earth
“Is it time now to end global warming skepticism?
In its first phase, Berkeley Earth addressed the concern: was the temperature rise on land improperly affected by the four key biases (station quality, homogenization, urban heat island, and station selection)? The answer turned out to be no!”
And on the great myth that global warming has stopped:
“Has Global Warming Stopped?
Some people have suggested that there has been no global warming over the past 13 years, and they ask whether our land-only analysis verifies that. The graph shows the results of our analysis with 1-year averaging (to smooth it). The black curve is the result of our analysis, and the grey lines represent our 95% confidence limits.
Berkeley Earth annual comparison
The large fluctuations up and down that take place every few years correlatevery strongly with the North Atlantic temperatures (the AMO index) and withEl Nino (ENSO index 3.4). See our paper on “Decadal Variations in the Global Atmospheric Land Temperatures” for analysis of that. The presence of these fluctuations makes any strong extrapolations from short-term behaviour uncertain.
Some people draw a line segment covering the period 1998 to 2010 and argue that we confirm no temperature change in that period. However, if you did that same exercise back in 1995, and drew a horizontal line through the data for 1980 to 1995, you might have falsely concluded that global warming had stopped back then. This exercise simply shows that the decadal fluctuations are too large to allow us to make decisive conclusions about long term trends based on close examination of periods as short as 13 to 15 years.”
Thus the Hockey stick is valid and Macintyre and McKitrick are still invalid!
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I was wondering which troll would be assigned to this thread and lo and behold the Stupid Horse appears.
In the mean time, from the realm of peer reviewed science…..
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The catty reply in perspective, let the data speak for itself (NB offset for clarity)
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Sillyfilly, I don’t think you are quite getting it. This is the end of days for the hoax, and in the age of the Internet the corpse of AGW cannot be re-animated, nor can it be hidden. All that remains for the fellow travellers is decades of shame.
You see there is a fundamental error in the very foundation of the “basic physics” of the “settled science”. It is embedded in the core of every climate model. It means every prediction of CO2 induced warming is not “just a little bit wrong” but totally and utterly wrong. So no matter how you thrash and flex there will be no “soft landing” for the hoax or any of the believers who vilified sceptics.
And the fundamental error?
Climastrologists claimed that the surface of the planet was a “near blackbody” with absorptivity and emissivity close to unity. 71% of the planet’s surface is ocean, so this claim is utterly incorrect. Liquid water is not a near blackbody. It is a “selective surface”. UV/SW/SWIR penetration below the surface combined with a slow speed of internal non-radiative transport and emissivity less than absorptivity is what drives our oceans far above a “theoretical blackbody” temperature of 255K. Downwelling IR from the atmosphere has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Without atmospheric cooling our oceans would hit 80C or beyond. And how does the atmosphere in turn cool? That’s right, radiative gases…
It is not just the AGW hypothesis that is in error, but the entire concept of a net radiative GHE. That’s how unbelievably wrong climastrologists are. There can be no face saving escape from this fist-biting error for any of the fellow travellers. The shame of Pitman and Alexander is forever.
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You are going to look even more STUPID that you already do when even the much adjusted HadCrut and GISS can’t keep the present 15-18 year plateau in temperatures from falling. 🙂
You really are coming across as a non-thinking, brain-washed parrot.
Your pitiful propaganda attempt at the WFT graph is totally laughable and shows you have zero understanding of what the climate and reality is actually doing.
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Except the data doesn’t ‘speak for itself’.
The world has been warming since the end of the little ice age around the end of the 19th century/start of 20th century.
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Ah Berkley.. the most most rabid climate data adjusters of the whole lot. !
Good choice to make a point… Not !
The Mann hockey stick is a farce of statistical malfeasance, and has been thouroughly destroyed by real statisticians.
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Even for filly this is an extraordinary and silly post. BEST is not a reliable source of temperature data; for a start BEST does not accept that UHIE is present in the temperature record.
Secondly the comment has nothing to do with the specific and well evidenced critique of BOM adjustment [homogenisation] procedure of raw data at particular Australian sites.
BOM has been caught with its pants down in respect of Bourke and Rutherglen where ex-CSIRO scientist Bill Johnson showed the BOM reason for adjusting raw data was wrong.
You can’t get any more specific than that and this alarmist waffle is just junk.
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Ahhh. A nice graph. From which peer reviewed and published paper did you get it from?
I look forward to your rebuttal to my linked paper being published in the Open Journal of Statistics. Let us know when it gets through peer review so we can keep an eye out for it.
Fair’s fair, you expect the same of everyone else.
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Hey Asinine Ass, you will really enjoy this post. 🙂
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Using the same data as McKitrick
Trends from HADCRUT4 and UAH lower trop (Roy Spencer)
No warming you’re dreamin’
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silly is a nice comment to this garbage reasoning. You need a lot of math knowledge to rebut the rebuttal of the the hockey stick.
To make a conclusion you need to master the math, master a chaotic system. This takes more than words and if you can’t show how your calculations is done you are nothing but a troll.
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Silly little donkey brain. Cherry pick with zero understanding of the climate patterns.. Good little propaganda donkey !!
You ALWAYS have to include the ElNino jump (nothing to do with CO2) to show ANY warming at all in the satellite measurement era.
The ElNino is all you have !!!
If you look at the trend since the ElNino settled at the beginning of 2001, even hadcrut show NOTHING, NADA , LEVEL !!!!!
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2001/plot/uah/from:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/trend
UHA for some reason didn’t show the same jump at the El Nino, which is why it is level rather than trending downwards like RSS.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2001/plot/rss/from:2001/trend
I do understand how a donkey would not comprehend these basic issues, but this article tells it like it really is. Donkeys just aren’t very bright, y’see.
Its a pity we don’t have un-molested data going back to 1940’s because it too would show that there has been no warming for about 75 years at least.
The raw data from the late 1800’s shows we are COOLER now than then. That’s why BOM et al have to “adjust” it.
Its all about trying to find some tiny speck of evidence to back up their alarmista warming hoax, and they aren’t succeeding.
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Oh and Asinine Ass, you should read the update in that link.
maybe there’s a job for you. 😉
You could wear your donkey hat, make an ass of yourself again.
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>”Using the same data as McKitrick. Trends from HADCRUT4 and UAH lower trop”
McKitrick using the same data plus RSS:
‘HAC-Robust Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series’
Start Year, CI Lower Bound Estimated Global
Trend, CI Upper Bound [C/decade]
HadCRUT4
1995 −0.0063 0.0925 0.1913
2001 −0.0664 −0.0037 0.0589
UAH
1998 −0.0586 0.0609 0.1804
2009 −0.7097 −0.1211 0.4675
RSS
1988 −0.0005 0.1184 0.2373
1997 −0.0975 −0.0109 0.0757
What warming there is is statistically indistinguishable from zero (CI contains zero i.e. insignificant) from either 1995, 1998, or 1988.
Similarly, statistically insignificant cooling from either 2001, 2009, or 1997.
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Oh look, a tracking of over 40C days from all Australian GHCM stations since 1895.
Oh look…. COOLING !!!!!
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[BEST] >”And on the great myth that global warming has stopped”
But why is it a “great myth” if there are numerous papers clamouring with excuses for “the pause” in global warming? To pause is to stop. There has been no resumption.
‘Before the deluge’
Bishop Hill
Last night climatologist Gareth Jones tweeted that there had been two dozen papers on the pause this year. In response, I wondered how many would have been published if David Whitehouse hadn’t have written his groundbreaking report [hotlinked] on the subject. This prompted Doug McNeall to comment “About two dozen”, a sentiment that was endorsed by Gavin Schmidt.
It’s always nice to be challenged, so I thought I’d look into this a bit. Take a look at Google Trends: [see graph]
If you look at Whitehouse’s report, he surveys the literature as well as public perceptions of the pause up to that point. Mainstream climatology was still amazingly reticent on the subject. The Met Office was showing decadal averages up to the 2000s so as to hide the pause;
Continues>>>>>>
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/8/23/before-the-deluge.html
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>”Australian GHCM stations” [‘Going down under’ – Real Science]
Continuously active since 1895 station list and graph is interesting too.
All that cooling that no-one knew about. Or did and didn’t tell.
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You really are a “SillyFilly”
You interject on a thread on validation of temperature data with a comment about the recent pause in warming, with the earliest date mentioned 1980. From this you conclude
The Hockey stick relates to the last 1000 years. The Medieval warm period ended over 500 years ago. You lack any form of reasoning whatsoever.
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Well that’s disappointing, Konrad.
I thought the plan was to throw the ‘bitter enders’ in a padded cell?
That’d be a soft landing . . right?
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Same old same old.
sillyfilly, if you and I were playing poker I’d raise the bet until you caved in and then rake every chip on the table right into into my pocket.
Enough with the bluffing. You’re getting embarrassing. 🙁
Truth be known, that’s exactly what skeptics have done. Your hand is busted ten ways from Sunday. Give it up and go home.
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Well put.
KK
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The problem here is we have the adjusted, homogenised definition of peer review.
In my profession getting a second opinion and/or a technical audit used to be called peer review, and was standard operating procedure. “See if I have got something wrong here will you?”. “Any pink elephants?” etc. This lot are self-annointed infallibles, supported by fawning acolytes.
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Yes, I’d have thought the call for Jennifer to produce something peer reviewed is a red herring . . a distraction.
What’s really happening here is that Jennifer is peer reviewing the BOM’s work.
. . . and they don’t like it.
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Jennifer,
I echo those sentiments, peer review is nothing more than a prepublishing sanity check by the journal to ensure they don’t end up a laughing stock. There is rarely and depth to it, much less a replication. In science it only matters who is right, you can be right without peer review. Data should be presented as raw plus, that is the raw data must always be there with adjustments as a seperate data set. If we start fiddling the raw data then we lose that initial starting point. Raw data can be filtered but the measurements shouldn’t be altered.
To say that climatologists wouldn’t use a non homogenised dataset is tantamount to saying climatologists are incapable of homogenising on their own…. I love that remark, “we admit we are too incompetent to repicate what the BOM does”.
Finally, someone recently said that peer/pal review isn’t helping science much and that scientific discoveries should undergo a hostile review, much the way the adversarial system works in the courts. A hypothesis should have two teams, one trying to prove it, and one trying to disprove it. I think I agree with that, papers should be sent to opponents, not peers.
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Urgh, excuse my spelling, the virtually unusable virtual keyboard strikes again. Don’t you hate computers that think they know better than you do?
The core problem here seems to be that environmental “Science” is full of environmentalists… IE Activists. None of the usual scientific objectiveness exists in this sector, there is “a cause”.
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Re #2.2 (Kevin Marshall)
>”Homogenization is a procedure”
Yes, with methods and application of them. So I think we need to be clear what we are talking about. I’ve made a comment at Jennifer Marohasy’s on this that links back here to JoNova:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/09/so-much-conversation-so-little-evidence/#comment-564149
It starts with (wrt ACORN):
More on both methods at the JN links.
But how are those methods applied? Is is by means of automation i.e. software application code with the methodology embedded? If so what datasets are accessed (local comparators have been missed)? To what extent has there been human intervention when the code returns garbage e.g. Rutherglen?
Much more on this at the link to Jennifer’s post above. Also some BEST, GISS, NIWA parallels and the fact that there’s no cross-match in many instances i.e. it gets messy.
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Found this article very interesting, on background and funding. Better research and analysis than Tim Blair could ever master. So the comment is largely Ho Hum!
On the analysis by Ken Stewart, the basis for most of this nonsense, we see Ken take raw data from everywhere but the other local long term weather stations. I showed previously that Amberley was a function of Ken’s statistics rather than the any correlation with the closest site at Ipswich. Similarly with Rutherglen, no mention of the closest site at Corowa. More importantly Ken used raw data from ACORN for his comparison. Diverse weather regions from the Snowys to East Gippsland to the Riverina, so taking no account of weather zones that are alike, how convenient for his commentary. Moreover Ken’s use of raw data does not account for discontinuities in the record. With Rutherglen analysis, we have Cabramurra the station moved. Deniliquin the station moved. Kerang the station moved. Sale the station moved. So all in all Ken has produced statistics which are unadjusted for known variations thus under any statistical relevancy, this is poorly modelled and has more holes than statistical swiss cheese.
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So sillyf, can you explain why the BOMs data for Burke only goes back to 1910, when we have very good records of the highest recorded temperatures in Burke in 1909. I seem to recall that the government layed on extra trains to evacuate Burke to try to stop more deaths from heat prostration. Just asking, you know?
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ACORN SAT only starts at 1910 due to the unreliability and unavailability of earlier records for a spatially accurate temperature record. The Bourke records historically are still available under closed station number 048013
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http://jennifermarohasy.com/questions-for-the-australian-bureau-of-meteorology/
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“ACORN SAT only starts at 1910 due to the unreliability and unavailability of earlier records for a spatially accurate temperature record.”
Nicely cut and pasted from the BOM’s cheater book.
What I do find interesting about this BOM declared “unreliable data” pre 1910.
Is the UN and its fellow global warming fraudsters the IPCC, have no qualms what so ever about using this “unreliable data”.
Do you reckon the BOM would have told them that it is so unreliable that they have totally expunged it from our historical temperature record.
Or do you think it’s “our” BOM’s own little secret.?
Geez, for a horses bottom, (and Jo, didn’t I clean that up!) you sure attract a lot of attention.
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Maybe this is a good place to post Steve Goddards lastest work ( short and to the point as usual )
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/going-down-under/
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Excellent heads up Ross.
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It looks like Goddard made a an error and he has corrected it here
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/the-australian-temperature-record-looks-hopeless/#comments
Not quite as it was in the first post.
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Huh?
KK
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An unattributed article….. and from the abc.. seriously 🙂
Which climate xxxxxx (insert whatever) trough dweller is it this time ?
Meaningless, irrelevant and trivially pointless, as is your meme.
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Silly filly says he/she “Found this article very interesting,… ”
You would find an ad hom fallacy useful wouldn’t you SF? That rather says a lot about you.
Or were you posting it as an example of ABC bias? Just point me to the spot where they ask David Karoly if it’s possible he’s “friends” with some of the people who have ever reviewed his work?
As for Rutherglen, if those nearby sites moved, then all the more reason why Rutherglens rare unmoved record is important and should be left alone. Other sites could be adjusted to fit Rutherglen, but … that would mean cooling… Oh No.
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You started with the issue of funding, so I merely returned the favour. Where’s the sceptic in you? Ken’s analysis is flawed as he doesn’t use data from any nearby stations as I have indicated with Amberley and Rutherglen. As well he takes no account of station movement. You may trust his analysis but I certainly don’t and your refusal to critically examine that analysis merely illustrates the bias in your unscientific agenda. Look at the posts half the people here aren’t even aware that GHG’s cause warming, do you?
Lord Jim can try this
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“As well he takes no account of station movement.”
There is absolutely NOTHING to show a station movement at either Amberley or Rutherglen.
ALL the evidence points to there NOT being a station movement at either place.
But evidence means nothing when you want to “bend” the data to suit your agenda does it. Make it up as you go along.. the AGW way. !!!
If there is proof that GHG’s cause atmospheric warming.. post it.
As for that link to Lord Jim..
“The historical surface temperature data set HadCrut provides a record of surface temperature trends and variability since 1850”
It may provide “a” record, but it is almost certainly nowhere near an accurate record. Waaaaay to much Jonesing been done!!
Anyone who accepts HadCrut as an accurate record of historic temperatures is doomed to failure from step one.
And note, that they say they go from 1850, so obviously no Australian data for the first 60 years. Right !
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Again the resident dodo misses the point. It was the comparison stations Ken used that have movement. Thus his baseline is flawed.
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Come on now Stupid Horse, we all know that to a warmist, being ‘sceptical’ means uncritically agreeing with the warmist agenda. It really upsets you that there are people out there who don’t fall into line behind the you doesn’t it?
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With literary licence:
Come on now [Catty and the Dodo], we all know that to a [coldaholic], being ‘sceptical’ means uncritically agreeing with the [coldaholic] agenda. It really upsets you that there are people out there who don’t fall into line behind the you doesn’t it?
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Wow. Did you come up with that by yourself or do you have a team of writers?
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Oh you poor little propaganda mule, weighed down with your innate stupidity.
It doesn’t upset me that you don’t have the most basic understanding of anything vaguely related to climate reality.
It amuses me. I find your little mutterings quite funny in their ignorance. 🙂
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FoolishFoal,
sceptics are no longer worried about those that still believe that adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will reduce the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability. We won, you lost and science has been saved.
Those that still continue to try and push the global warming hoax are now a positive joy! No one could have planned it better if they tried. Without provocation, all the most useless people on the planet decided as one to stake their permanent reputations on a provably false pseudo-scientific hypothesis. The WMO, UNEP, IPCC, (in fact the entire UN), and every activist, journalist and politician of the Left is now permanently discredited. Forever. It’s beyond delicious…we didn’t even need to build a “B” ark 😉
102
Most people says co2 cause SOME warming and then question is how much. But try to PROVE any warming instead of garbage you post here. Guess you are not able to !
40
Inferior trolling by the horse today; she says:
In fact Stockwell and Stewart did a comprehensive critique of the old HQ BOM temperature network and those complaints apply just as much to the ACORN network and any and all methods of homogenising data.
110
This from Mssrs Stockwell and Stewart:
“A review by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) [13],
of the New Zealand meteorological authority, NIWA, 7-Station Series [12] claims that
because NIWA did not correctly follow statistical techniques in Rhoades and Salinger
[23], their ad-hoc method exaggerated warming over the last hundred years.”
And we now know that that statement was false and unsubstantiated! Maybe you could start a new comedy series “carry on regardless”
216
Do we know it is wrong ? The BOM audited the NIWA work and did not agree with –in auditing terms , they did not sign it off.
51
>”And we now know that that statement was false and unsubstantiated!”
Actually it was true, and it still is true. The Judge never addressed (he ignored) the evidence, which was:
‘Statistical Audit of the NIWA 7-Station Review’
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/docs/Statistical%20Audit%20of%20the%20NIWA%207-Station%20Review%20Aug%202011.pdf
NZCSC/NZCSET may have lost their claim but their series which adheres to R&S93 is still alive and well in that document i.e. it is a valid series and the lost case didn’t change that, the Judge made no ruling on it whatsoever (how could he if he didn’t even address it?).
NIWA still will not, because it cannot, produce the basis for their series. Therefore the NIWA series has lessor statistical validity than the NZCSET series which was reviewed by 3 independent professional statisticians.
51
Just so we have the reality, from the judgment:
The decisions/actions under challenge
[11] The Trust now challenges the following three decisions/actions of NIWA:
(a) the decision to publish the adjusted temperature data 7SS without (the Trust says) applying the recognised scientific opinion of Rhoades and Salinger, 1993 (the 1999 decision); and
(b) the decision to publish the 11SS which (the Trust says) contained obvious deficiencies in its data (the 2009 decision); and
(c) the decision to publish the review of the 7SS covering the period 1909 to 2008 which (the Trust says) departed from recognised scientific opinion (the review decision).
[12] To support its application for judicial review the Trust has filed affidavits by Professor Carter, Mr Dunleavy and Mr Dedekind.
Summary/Result
[185] The plaintiff does not succeed on any of its challenges to the three decisions of NIWA in issue. The application for judicial review is dismissed…
The evidence
17
SF #2.3.4.1.1
>”The evidence”
No that is not the evidence SF, you’ve quoted the Judge’s opinion.
I challenge you to quote the Judge’s deliberation of the evidence in respect to:
(a) the decision to publish the adjusted temperature data 7SS without (the Trust says) applying the recognised scientific opinion of Rhoades and Salinger, 1993
The core evidence supporting and proving the claim (a), as supplied to the court, was:
‘Statistical Audit of the NIWA 7-Station Review’
http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/docs/Statistical%20Audit%20of%20the%20NIWA%207-Station%20Review%20Aug%202011.pdf
That evidence was reviewed by 3 independent professional statisticians. The Judge knew this from the Dedekind affidavit but he chose not to let that enter into his deliberation because he dismissed the entire affidavit simply because Dedekind was not a climate scientist presumably of the same stature as Dr Mullen – never mind the statisticians (of which Mullen is not one either)
Again, I challenge you to show that the Judge did in fact consider that specific evidence on it’s (considerable) merits.
Apart from all that, the ‘Statistical Audit’ series has the greater statistical validity irrespective of what the Judge did or did not do so it still stands as a valid alternative i.e. it rigourously applies the recognised scientific opinion of Rhoades and Salinger, (1993). The court decision does not change that reality because the Judge offered no opinion whatsoever on the NZCSET NZT7.
NIWA’s NZT7 does not rigourously apply R&S93 and the ‘Statistical Audit’ proves that, in or out of court, if it is actually considered. The Judge simply accepted Dr Mullen’s word in preference to the evidence. That acceptance can be easily quoted from the Summary/Result.
So in effect we have a court approved, but statistically inferior series (NIWA NZT7), and a court ignored and statistically superior series (NZCSC/NZCSET NZT7).
That’s the reality SF.
70
The NIWA case did not turn on whether the NZ series was wrong but turned on the Judge’s acceptance of the NIWA as the standard; he accepted that without analysis; it is an amazing decision.
Anyway again you troll, the NZ ‘decision’ has nothing to do with Stockwell and Stewart’s analysis of the HQ and by inference ACORN networks.
61
>”Moreover Ken’s use of raw data does not account for discontinuities in the record.With Rutherglen analysis, we have Cabramurra the station moved. Deniliquin the station moved. Kerang the station moved. Sale the station moved. So all in all Ken has produced statistics which are unadjusted for known variations thus under any statistical relevancy”
Should point out that all those different station moves at different times still produced agreeing profiles to Rutherglen and to each other. That’s an amazing coincidence isn’t it? Maybe the moves weren’t significant then.
BOM overlooks these stations in favour of others (much) further away i.e. remote stations rather than nearby. There was nothing to stop them homogenizing nearby Cabramurra, Deniliquin, Kerang and Sale. Neither was there anything to stop them using the profiles of the raw data from any of those nearby stations that corresponded (overlapped) the supposed Rutherglen breaks identified using remote station comparators i.e. homogenization is irrelevant in that case, only the profiles matter.
But if they had done that instead of using remote comparators there probably wouldn’t be any Rutherglen breaks. And if there was any, different breakpoints and different signs and magnitudes anyway.
30
Should be:
“Neither was there anything to stop them [BOM] using the profiles of the raw data from any of those nearby stations that corresponded (overlapped) the supposed Rutherglen breaks identified using remote station comparators [where there was no site move occurring in the raw data at that overlap]”
But again, using nearby makes the remotely identified breaks invalid so the exercise is redundant.
30
Obviously you don’t know Eastern Australian geography, Ken used the remote sites. At least have a semblance of accuracy
19
>”Ken used the remote sites” (#2.3.5.2)
Rubbish SF. The “remote” sites are what BOM used. They are far far away from the sites Ken used.
Ken used nearby sites, OK there are other nearby sites – so what? Besides, Ken hasn’t stopped, he is now compiling data for 17 neighbours, see #6.1:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/09/pitman-says-bom-dont-fiddle-with-data-its-magical-science-by-elite-centres-of-excellence/#comment-1554883
30
BOM “does” Echuca and Wangaratta.
They seem to homogenise all local sites in exactly the same direction, sort of like a round-about.. chicken and the egg scenario.
I wonder if ANY of local regional sites actually had a warming trend before they started “adjusting”.
I suspect that this also happens in the US, with homogenisation piled on homogenisation, until they create whatever trend they want to create.
20
>”They seem to homogenise all local sites in exactly the same direction, sort of like a round-about.. chicken and the egg scenario.”
A bit like BEST’s “Raw Data relative to Expected Monthly Means” and “Difference from Regional Expectation”.
Here’s HUME RESERVOIR closest to Albury (16.24km):
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/151884
Which is pulled in with all the others to produce Albury (near Rutherglen):
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/locations/36.17S-147.18E
RUTHERGLEN RESEARCH (60.89km) away is one of the others pulled in:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/stations/151882
Except Albury is dependent on the “regional expectation” of HUME RESERVOIR and the others.
How can there be an “expectation”? Chicken, egg?
And BEST Albury looks nothing like ACORN Rutherglen around the early 1970s (top graph red dots):
http://jennifermarohasy.com/temperatures/rutherglen/
And BEST Rutherglen raw is oddly different to BOM Rutherglen raw (note the differing length of series and the record gap breakpoint.
It would be interesting to look at the BEST breakpoints for Amberley and Bourke too. BRST use their own “scalpel” method for breakpoint identification.
10
And Benalla
And Ballarat, a bit further away
20
I am from an accounting background, so will compare with that field.
In accountancy there are rules, with a legal requirement of compliance. If auditors find examples of non-compliance they will be keep on checking thoroughly to assess the extent of issue, and require correction. If the business tries to obstruct this process, or continue to claim it is a non-problem, those accounts may not be signed off. Potentially the business can be closed down and the directors prosecuted. In the businesses I have worked for, any infringement was treated seriously, and process failures tightened.
For homogenisation, they are general guidelines with no legal requirement for compliance. These guidelines have been broken in a number of instances. Instead of calling for an independent audit, or attempting to correct the errors, there are people saying it is not a problem.
361
What we see here is the normal “Circling of the Wagons” when under attack from the Sceptic indians.
They literally do not have anything else.
261
And that you can be absolutely certain of.
Until somebody with higher authority slaps them.
You , I and everbody else will simply be stonewalled.
This pear review is nothing more than a tool to allow the other pears to continue their collective deception.
There is another word that describes what they are ALL doing.
But Jo seems to have a problem putting the same brush over ALL of them.
Even though every single one of them that are sucking on the public teat, are happy to adhere to pear review to justify their deception.
Here’s a very simple anolgy.
If I were to get an expert. (pear) Trained in the art of winding back the the speedo of my car.Which by the way is a very specific “skill”not known to everbody.
So it would make it easier to sell my car to you.
What would you call me?
And secondly, what would you call my fellow “pear” that supplies the “tool”?
The BOM’s actions and their pear shaped worlds best practice speaks for itself.
They and their protestations are irelivant now.
The bigger question now is, when is somebody in government going to grow a pair and do something?
Because right at the minute the BOM is just continuing on its merry way.
Giving two fingers to everbody who questions!
172
Rutherglen serves to show at least three fundamental conceptual flaws in the now automated homogenization processes that have become ( in various algorithmic incarnations) accepted ‘international practices’.
1. Station siting. The surfacestations.org project has inspected over 80% of USHCN. Only 18% met the WMO-ISO siting standard adopted in 2010. The problems are not just UHI. There are many micro site contamination issues with rural stations. Rutherglen is a category 1–the very best. Adjusting it using stations with unknown micro environments is fallacious.
2. ‘Regional climate envelopes’ for comparison. There may be a local envelope except in mountainous terrain. Assuming stations hundreds of Kilometers away are similar, as BOM does, makes no sense. Inland versus ocean. Rural versus metropolitan. BEST rejected 26 monthly lows from station 166900 (Amundsen Scottat the South pole) because did not meet the regional expectation. Well, the nearest station is McMurdo on the coast, 1300 km away and 2700 meters lower.
3. Scalpel method stitching using the Meele method (which NOAA, NASA, and BOM probably do because it was peer reviewed. The logical flaw is pointed out by Zhang et. al. In Theor. Appl. Climatol. 115:365-373 (2014) using Chinese stations.
Those are the technical issues BOM should be addressing. What sites were used to homogenize Rutherglen. Are they WMO-ISO compliant? If not, why not. How far away? If not the same climate zone, why not. And how were the (in reality non- existing) detected move break points stitched? Meele?
Don’t let uo on them.
291
The status of Rutherglen as “cat.1 -the very best” implies that it could be used as a “control” to determine the accuracy of the “homogenisation” process. But it seems it has itself been homogenised! So I consulted the CAWCR technical report O49 of 3/2012 to elucidate what “controls” were used.
Section 6 deals with quality control but only of the raw data.
ACORN-SAT sets exacting standards for the collection of the raw data – very commendable- but then accepts that the historical data does not meet the standards – “ideal criteria which are met by few sites in the world AND NONE IN AUSTRALIA”. hence THE NEED FOR HOMOGENISATION. The object of the exercise is “to create long term records of the temperature… which can be used for the monitoring of climate variability”. So the data used bears no relationship to the temperatures which were actually measured – these not being relevant for “monitoring climate variability” – that’s clear enough.
It seems that hidden amongst this detail is a tacit admission that the historical temperature record of Australia (and the rest of the world) is unfit for purpose and that all the papers referring to “the global temperature” are speculative.
The first question for the CAGW narrative is “Is the world warming or not?” It, of course, cannot be that we don’t know and have never known, otherwise none of this makes any sense.
I must accept that it is me that doesn’t make any sense – no change there then- so back to the drawing board.
161
Well said, Jo.
Too many jobs, reputations, research opportunities, and political deals are at stake. Not to mention money.
We will keep at them.
302
Ken, I will phone you later today about your 17 neighbours. Meanwhile Jo motivated me to write something… http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/09/so-much-conversation-so-little-evidence/ Cheers,
202
Just curious… In The Conversation they claim the data mangling reduced the overall warming trend. Ken, Jo says you find the data-mangling has increased the trend significantly. Assuming the same, or at least very similar, data were used by both Ken and TC’s source, then both cannot be true. Surely this is the key point of significance?
10
[…] as Jo Nova explains at her blog today, they didn’t actually explain how and why it was necessary to change a cooling […]
50
The level of condescension and obfuscation in that Conversation article is just stunning. The comments I could wade through were, uh, well, um… not very polite (I don’t want the mod to thwak me again for being insulting, and I owe SillyFilly an apology for that time.) I especially like the lovely maps of Australia shown to counter the fairly well founded allegations of data fixing through homogenization of average temperatures starting around the beginning of the 20th century… with maps which show trends in the “frequency of hot days” starting in 1951. I don’t know Australia’s history that well but the few graphs I’ve seen for your temps all seem to have 1951 around the bottom of a cooling curve between highs in ~1939 and highs around ~1960… so ’51 would be a convenient place to start a trend line… if you want to insure that trend line has the right slope.
230
Seems to me as if the proponents of CAGW are well and truly on the defensive.
It’s not incompetence, greed or corruption that dives this.
It’s professional integrity and academic prestige.
This drives the need to rush out into the open to defend the lie.
That’s why the ‘pause’ is not embraced by those most alarmed by warming.
There are reputations at stake here, big reputations riding on the warming continuing.
“… he that robs me of my good name steals everything.” (apologies to Shakespere)
The more often the lie is defended the more obvious the lie becomes.
160
In actual fact it’s all of the above.
100
… plus the gullibility of the public in general. All these factors have kept the AGW train powering along, and is still powering along. What is needed is the tracks ahead of it to be removed to derail the train. The best way for that to happen is for the vast majority of good scientists to get together and spill the beans. One can only live in hope but I won’t hold my breath.
60
In some defense of the public, it’s hard for them to have an informed opinion if the purveyors of information are not only denying access but are actively skewing the story. We here all love that the Internet allows us access to information that does not flow through the gate keepers of the “news” media. That media is almost universally in the tank for big government Progressives. There are exceptions and Mr. Lloyd is to be commended for his bravery. People lose their jobs because they won’t toe the CAGW line and many won’t touch these stories. The Progressive one world government types would love to see the UN get that control so they can nip this “truth” fad in the bud.
They have also decided that CAGW is an easy tool to herd the sheep back towards the direction of the Stone Age with less fuss. They can’t have that standard of living and education level getting too high or the sheep will start questioning the wisdom of the
wolfshepherd leading them off to the abattoir. Ultimately it’s all about control and power and the eco movements have long been taken over by the radicals to be used for control and re-routing of riches. Most of the public would have an absolute fit if the real stories were known that’s why this is all so important. The Prog’s have been at this game for about a century and they have the microphones, cameras, printing presses and the government bureaucracies. We have the Internet, a few honest reporters and politicians and blogs like Jo’s and others that are really doing much more than just dealing with climate fraud70
Jo, if someone wanted a dose of scientific reality they certainly wouldn’t come here. If you can’t offer substantive criticism then don’t comment. BTW did you read both posts one censored, the other not.
013
“if someone wanted a dose of scientific reality they certainly wouldn’t come here”
Certainly NOT from you, that is for sure. Nada, Zip, Nothing !!!
“If you can’t offer substantive criticism then don’t comment”
Talking to yourself again, I see !!
60
Dodo’s science is as extinct as his nickname. But I do talk to Mr Ed, get right to the source and ask the horse!
07
More senseless braying from the malignant mule.
But far more erudite than usual.
00
there is plenty of science fiction involved in climate science, scientific reality does not appear to be high on the agenda.
regarding the temperature data.if a station moves it should be regarded as a new station,if it stops reporting for a period (a real stop,not just forgetting to send in recorded data) that period should be recorded as a break . tobs should be a one off adjustment ,and all trends from all individual stations should be left as they are. data from stations affected by uhi should be highlighted as such and not used in any averaging of rural station trends.
the bottom line is manipulation of raw data ,whether justified or not is creating a set of numbers that bear little or no relation to what the temperature actually did in the past,so little credence should be given to it in regards to policy decisions.
20
‘apologies to Shakespeare’ so you should – Iago says this to Othello in the process of inducing the destruction of HIS reputation by his own gullibility. Iago withholds (false)data to intrigue his master who responds “these stops of thine fright me the more, for such things in a false disloyal knave are tricks of custom”. In other words an untruth is more convincing if you think you have extracted it from a reluctant purveyor.
60
The warmist definition of homogenization – “the process of harmonizing raw data with computer models”.
130
No more pause:
Warming will be non-stop from now on
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26122-no-more-pause-warming-will-be-nonstop-from-now-on.html#.VATX0kuBA-Y
~ ~ ~
Rumours the famous Gypsy Fortune Teller, Madam Zenda, the “Horoscopic Harridan,” the “Psychic Slag,” is part of the 97% consensus of settled science have been confirmed!
40
I think relevant issues here may be “computer codes” and cults of management and leadership.
Much of the complexity of the subject is likely to be simply that the software has grown into a monster that few understand in detail, certainly not the leaders and spokespeople for BoM and similar govt organisations.
The software has probably evolved over the years, updated by various students and postdocs, and is probably poorly documented and contains several bugs.
71
Let’s call it for what it really is; corruption. Corruption has crept into every other profession so why does anyone think for one moment that science is immune to corruption? Peer review is BS. The silence of so many from the scientists, most of whom are good ones, is a very sad indictment on them and their profession. AGW will go down in history as one of the blackest moments in science, and will tarnish even good scientists for a long time to come, if not forever. Sorry but by and large they have only themselves to blame.
150
I’d say it is a case of confirmation bias.
By not allowing public inspection and replication of results BOM are effectively keeping the adjustments ‘in house’ and not exposing those results to possible censure by external critics.
Apparently BOM doesn’t like being criticized, but I’m afraid that is part and parcel of science (or democracy for that matter, despite our ‘laws’ about not ‘offending’ people).
90
Jo,
Via a comment at Steve Goddard
http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/01-09-2014/128413-global_warming_science-0/
60
10
I first became aware of problems due to vested interests in so-called ‘Global Warming’ some years ago while living in the UK. I have been interested for years in how Man goes about the business of the measurement of earth’s temperatures, rainfall, wind strength and other phenomena and so wrote a letter asking if any reader could tell me of the standards pertinent to measuring these phenomena to the Guardian newspaper’s Comment is Free section. I was quite shocked by the vitriolic replies I received from various individuals, all telling me that I had no right to ask such shocking questions and how dare I question ‘climate authorities’!! It occurred to me at that moment that something must be seriously awry in the world of measurement and so-called climate science if such a mild enquiry was reacted to so viciously by so many who trumpeted their dedication to ‘peer reviewed science’.
I have always been of a skeptical bent in that I like to see evidence for claims made about anything: from the moment of seeing so many utterly unhinged replies in CiF I became very skeptical about the veracity of climatactic measurements that one should be able to accept without question, such as rainfall and daily temp minima and maxima.
I have used a good quality max and min thermometer and an agricultural-quality rain guage at my own residence for many years in order to satisfy my curiosity about what is happening in my area, as I believe curiosity has to be satisfied otherwise we remain in a state of perpetual ignorance and risk believing all sorts of nonsense if we do not attempt to ‘know stuff’ for ourselves.
This current dishonesty from the BOM is no surprise to any sentient observer!
140
World’s best malpractice !?
100
The Conversation.
Academic Rigor Mortis.
Journalistic Fail.
60
And unbelievably feral … I spent a few minutes reading a few comments and they make The Drum look well-behaved by comparison. They are our best and brightest? Or from the those that can’t do, teach set?
20
Bit hard, I would have thought, to do (2) when you don’t have (1).
Maybe BOM will one day raise itself to the dignity of a scientific proposition. i.e. Make details of all adjustments publicly available so they can be scientifically replicated.
Until that day comes BOM is not even doing science, so talk about peer review to disprove what amounts to an unsubstantiated assertion is premature, imo.
140
Moreover, one should not /even need to ask/ a publicly funded scientific body to produce information so its findings can be replicated.
This /should be/ part of its contract as a public body that has responsibilities to… the public!
120
Lord Jim. Great comment, that is really the heart of all this controversy. Public servants not serving the public.
20
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask BOM how are cooling trends converted into warming trends and receive a legitimate response: more so when so much expenditure has been invested in the AGW hypothesis. With the lack of an understandable reply to the effect we are professionals and it is too complex for you amateurs to comprehend I smell rat. Sites such as Burke have cooled, that is fact because the readings say so, it is the conversion of these data by homogenisation into warming trends where the error lies. I am not saying that this is as bad as things like the “Hockey Stick” projection, or the Climategate Emails, but it is a cause for concern view of the billion spent on apparently dubious trends.
80
The handy thing about climate parameters is there are plenty of trend-cherries to pick:
Reminds me of a ditty about cricket statistics I heard 50 years ago.
It’s never been done by a vicars son on a Wednesday afternoon.
20
Brilliant article, Joanne.
But I think you’ll wait a long while before there is any sensible response from the BoM or The Conversation.
50
Why is it necessary to have a peer reviewed publication to point out or ask why BoM has applied a peer reviewed process to stations that apparently don’t fit the criteria of the said peer reviewed process?
The questions being asked are not difficult questions.
If BoM has made a mistake then perhaps they should fix it.
If they have applied the algorithms correctly according to the said peer reviewed publication then they should not have any problems clearing up this matter!
I think Jennifer & Ken & others pointing out that the data may have been corrupted (for whatever reason) is entirely valid. It is potentially capable of corrupting the results of any further research let alone potentially incapable of generating useful forecasting for businesses who must gamble with the weather/climate year in and year out.
Even decision-making about such things as environmental watering in the MDB can be adversely affected and result in the pointless waste of valuable resources.
90
Pitman and Alexander are the type of mindless idiots I have encountered throughout government offices and throughout academia. I don’t understand how they can write absolute nonsense like this and still show their faces in public.
123
Andy may like to read Ross McKitrick’s new study about the hiatus or pause in temp over the last 19 years.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/01/new-paper-on-the-pause-says-it-is-19-years-at-surface-and-16-26-years-at-the-lower-troposphere/
He calculates the pause to be 19 years at the surface and 16 to 26 years in the lower troposphere. BTW there are hints that UAH will soon use a new method that will bring it closer to RSS measurements of temp. If true this will be another blow to the extremists.
60
Remember just a few years ago when Flannery was predicting disaster for Australia? From the Herald Sun Feb 12, 2011:
In 2007, Flannery predicted global warming would so dry our continent that desalination plants were needed to save three of our biggest cities from disaster.
As he put it: “Over the past 50 years, southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming …
“In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months.”
One premier, Queensland’s Peter Beattie, took such predictions – made by other warming alarmists, too – so seriously that he spent more than $1 billion of taxpayers’ money on a desalination plant, saying “it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower-than-usual rainfalls could eventuate”.
But check that desalination plant today: mothballed indefinitely, now that the rains have returned.
(Incidentally, notice how many of Flannery’s big predictions date from 2007? That was the year warming alarmism reached its most hysterical pitch and Flannery was named Australian of the Year.)
Why don’t warmistas talk any more about rainfall trends in Australia?
Here are the Australian records of rainfall across Australia since 1900 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/
The decadal trend shows about 450mm pa in 2005 to 510mm pa in 2010(Perhaps they haven’t been homogenized yet? )
92
Pity you don’t use the relevant statistics or the correct quotes. From Flannery
“We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems”
So “Winter Rainfall Zone
Southern Australia”
So much for the Herald Sun and specifically Andrew Bolt.
215
From Editorial: Australia – not such a lucky country, 16 June 2007, From New Scientist Print Edition. Tim Flannery at http://www.sciencearchive.org.au/nova/newscientist/105ns_001.htm
As for: “So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems”
Water storage:
Adelaide 81.6%
Brisbane 98.0%
Canberra 68.0%
Darwin 69.2%
Hobart 100.0%
Melbourne 76.6%
Perth 22.8%
Sydney 94.2%
http://water.bom.gov.au/waterstorage/awris/
So much for SF.
Incidentally the Sydney desalination plant costs $500 000 a day.
60
“From Flannery…..”
ROFLMAO !!!!!!
You still bother quoting that goose?
You seriously are a stand up comedian of a donkey, aren’t you !! 🙂
62
Summer rainfall anomaly South Australia
Do mules eat cherries ?
21
So in summer, when farmers need water, its raining more, and winter when rain can be a nuisance, its raining less.
Climate change again proves to be BENEFICIAL !!
Just like extra atmospheric CO2 is proven to be BENEFICIAL.
21
Quoting flannery makes your position even more despicable filly. Statements like that by flannery led directly to policies which meant Wivenhoe being full as a drought mitigator instead of its original purpose as a flood mitigator.
There is nothing righteous in the position of the alarmists; their vanity cause has led to deaths and catastrophe.
72
Climate science on race day;
1 / Oceans of the punter’s OPM.
2 / A few very good and genuine climate jockey scientists although rather rare and quite hard to correctly identify but who can create new strategies and see the openings and have figured out that it might be best to find a couple of new horses from a completely different breeding stock and maybe a new racing site to run them.
3 / A whole great swag of low level, third class climate model jockeys all trying to figure out new ways on their models to ride a climate bred horse without actually ever getting on a horse out in the real paddock.
4 / Those third rate climate model jockeys are all still busily involved in trying to flog a couple of what are now very dead horses to the punters.
The climate model jockeys don’t want to know about how dead those horses are as both those Climate stable horses were probably sired by the IPCC / CRU’s stables by the well known Mann, Jones, Santer, Houghton, take your pick, and are consequently called “Catastrophic Warming” and “Catastrophic Climate Change”,
4 / Meanwhile the race has been cancelled by the temperature stewards due to the lack of interest by Nature in ensuring a dry and warm track.
A fact that the mass of third rate climate model jockeys don’t want to know about yet as it cruels their chances of grabbing even larger lashings of the punter’s OPM.
5 / In the car park and around the pool, the punters who were told to bring their own ice are finding the southern end of the park pool, despite the forecast of warm and drier, seems to be getting a lot colder and they can get all the ice they want from down that end.
6 / And the punters are saying the hell with it if this is what they call a race.
In any case it looks like the race is rigged and the horses looked like they have been comprehensively nobbled so most of the punters are now either going home or thinking about doing so.
30
The BoM says it is necessary to adjust past temperature readings because the old records aren’t accurate.
That implies that those who made these readings were incompetent. Could some ex-employee/record keeper sue them?
Also, some of those supposedly incompetent recorders in previous years may still work at the BoM in senior positions. Why should we trust the BoM if that is the case?
82
How does the BOM know the old records are not accurate? If some records in an area are suspected of being inaccurate, how do they determine which are accurate and which are not? Do they have some form of time travel not available to us plebs which enables the mighty BOM to determine which records to “homogenise” and which to accept? It seems to be a whole lot of hogwash to defend their reputations and allow them to deride anybody who questions their supreme positions as experts – typical bureaucratic “unknown drips under pressure!
40
Judith Curry is also discussing the new McKitrick study. http://judithcurry.com/2014/09/01/how-long-is-the-pause/
10
why hasn’t abc radio national/tv etc reported on this, even after the following?
29 Aug: Australian: Graham Lloyd: Bureau of Meteorology told to be more transparent
THE Bureau of Meteorology was told to be more transparent and make public all details of the computer models used to adjust historic temperature records by the peer review panel that cleared its work as world best practice.
The 2011 independent panel told BOM to clearly explain any changes that were made between raw and “homogenised” data…
BOM’s 2011 independent panel said it was “satisfied overall” with the bureau’s methodology but it “encouraged” the bureau to improve the public transparency of the process used.
The panel recommended a list of adjustments be made publicly available along with the adjusted temperature series including the rationale for each adjustment. It said the computer codes underpinning the national ACORNSAT data-set, including the algorithms and protocols used by BOM for data quality control, should be made publicly available.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/bureau-of-meteorology-told-to-be-more-transparent/story-e6frg8y6-1227040620469
the Bronwen O’Shea interview with Jennifer Marohasy for regional radio does not count as abc coverage. shame on our public broadcaster.
nothing was more shocking to a former CAGW believer such as myself, and others i know, than to realise, post-Climategate, that the temperature records had been tampered with. no matter what the rationale, this was not widely known until Climategate, except by the “insiders” and for those sceptics who were paying attention. kudos to the sceptics for all their hard work before and since Climategate.
70
>”They don’t question Jennifer Marohasy’s remarkable figures, they don’t even mention them at all, nor use the names “Rutherglen”, “Amberley” or “Bourke” –how revealing.”
They do manage to link to The Australian (“Cherrypicking weather stations” hotlink) where I see at least Rutherglen (rest paywalled).
But yes, they are all (Pitman, Alexander, Readfern et al) tiptoeing around the critical issues without actually addressing them. And in ‘BOM finally explains’ (see below) all we saw was BOM refusal, circumvention, speculation, hand-waving, and sidestepping.
Memo to defenders of the climate faith:
Tiptoeing around, hand-waving, refusal, circumvention, sidestepping, and speculation, are not valid scientific and statistical explanations.
We want to scrutinize the statistical AND physical (i.e. local conditions) rationale (we already know the methodology) for specific applications of the ACORN-SAT homogenization method (M&W09) and adjustment method (PM95) in the cases of breakpoints at Rutherglen, Amberley and Bourke – for starters.
70
Re #28
>”And in ‘BOM finally explains’ (see below)”
BOM have been shown to ignore nearby data in preference for remote comparator locations hundreds of kilometres away (similarly did NIWA for their NZT7) in their application of their M&W09 homogenization method and PM95 adjustment method (NIWA departed wildly from R&S93).
Case of Rutherglen:
‘BOM finally explains’
Jo says: Let’s check out those [near] neighbors (Deniliquin, Wagga Wagga, Sale, Kerang, Cabramurra) [instead of BOM’s remote locations]
Graph http://kenskingdom.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/rutherglen-raw-v-reg-mean-raw.jpg?w=450&h=270
Post
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/bom-finally-explains-cooling-changed-to-warming-trends-because-stations-might-have-moved/
There’s something immediately wrong with either or both of BOM’s homogenization and adjustment rationales and/or applications of them (but not necessarily the actual methodology) just by this case alone i.e. it is not necessarily the methodology that is at fault it is the application of it. Mikky identified this in ‘Hiding something’ (#39.1.1):
To which I replied,
Except, acceptable answers to those questions have not yet been forthcoming to date.
100
1 Sept: Washington Times Editorial: Pressing the climate hoax
The Obama administration signs up for a war on carbon dioxide
The globalists are taking the next step in the war on carbon dioxide. Scientists have linked this gas to the feeding of healthy plants and the blossoming of flowers, so the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations‘ global warming alarmist arm, last week let slip a plan for getting rid of it when the U.N. summit on the climate convenes on Sept. 23…
They’re all in a hurry, but the planet isn’t. The “warming” produced one of the coldest winters on record in most areas of the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica has been cooling and gaining ice for years, according to data gathered by the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois.
A little warming might even be nice right about now. We’ve seen temperatures hold steady for the past 18 years, as measured by Remote Sensing Systems, the most accurate thermometers in the world…
The palpable lack of global warming has naturally encouraged skepticism to the point of worldwide indifference to the doomsayers. So the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change worries that it might become irrelevant…
It’s all so unnecessary. Carl Wunsch, one of the world’s most respected oceanographers, estimates that the U.N. panel exaggerated greenhouse warming of the oceans by at least 2.5 times…
When the hysterics — and the opportunists determined not to let hysteria go to waste — meet in New York to discuss a global pact on carbon dioxide, we’ll see who stands up to the Obama administration and the U.N. panel and their fashionable hoax.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/1/editorial-pressing-the-climate-hoax/
30
Fairfax/ABC try the John Howard meme!
2 Sept: SMH: Peter Martin: Cheap option appeals as the way to cut carbon release
Like John Howard before him Tony Abbott has set in train a series of events that will lead to a price on carbon…
Abbott appointed a panel to examine the Renewable Energy Target that was predominantly hostile to it. But like Howard’s taskforce years earlier it was staffed by public service economists charged with examining the evidence.
Last week the panel found against the RET, but in a way that has again built up the case for an emissions trading scheme…
Direct Action establishes a fund that will award grants to companies that come up with promising emission reduction schemes…
An emissions trading system wins hands down on the RET review panel’s prefered measure.
As the taskforce that reported to John Howard late last decade discovered, such a system is by design the cheapest possible means of reducing emissions…
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/cheap-option-appeals-as-the-way-to-cut-carbon-release-20140901-10atni.html
“horrifying” headline:
1 Sept: ABC: Scrapping the Renewable Energy Target a ‘horrifying’ prospect for carbon neutral cattle farmer
Jeremy Story Carter, Country Hour
The Federal Government is currently reviewing a report that recommends changing or significantly scaling back the target.
Bob Davie, who claimed carbon neutrality on his Phillip Island cattle farm in July this year, says that would be disastrous.
“I can’t see any sense in scrapping the Renewable Energy Target,” said Mr Davie.
“It actually horrifies me, to be quite honest.”
The RET was introduced by the Howard Government in 1997 with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-02/scrapping-ret-a-horrifying-prospect-for-farmer/5710292
20
Congratulations, the “Alarmed Ones” are defending the indefensible.
This is what the taxpayers notice, those not already engaged in examining the propaganda.
The law of holes is never understood in academia.
Keep the pressure on your politicians, ask them if this is good enough for government?
As we devolve into kleptocracy fools and bandits dominate the government payrolls.
Hard to hide the decline.
As the schemers slide out of the public eye, we will need to threaten our idiot politicians before they will repeal all the stupid regulations and tax grabs imposed using the CAGW meme.
10
Peer review is failing in its’ purpose, but it’s nothing new.
An example.
I read an excellent book ‘Born in Africa’ the other day, and noted that Australian Raymond Dart found a skull in South Africa in the early 20th century, and proposed it as an intermediary species of hominid, but this was soundly rejected by peer review, largely because he was actually in Africa doing hard field work, whilst all the peer reviewers were part of the establishment sitting back in England. Several decades later when they actually looked at it more thoroughly they agreed it was in fact an intermediary species.
What he failed to do was first recognise their superiority and excellence, and give them most of the say and the limelight in the discovery. He failed to go through the tortuous channel of how to make a scientific discovery, by giving the authorities the ownership of such a discovery.
‘Peer review’ has always been a way for the elite and those within it to control the system for their own self-importance and agenda.
Nothing has changed, but perhaps it’s about time it was reformed.
70
In The Netherlands I already was an amateur meteorologist at the age of 11. I am now 48 years old. The Netherlands is a relatively small country. About 300 Km long and about 200 Km wide. There can be huge differences in temperatures in The Netherlands of up to 15° or even more. Depending on clouds and wind direction. I have never seen one compelling reason to homogenize temperatures other than UHI. How is it possible you in Australia would even contemplate homogenization of temperatures in such a large semi continent just because a station does not obey other stations hundreds of kilometers away?
131
Exactly Reinder.Unfortunately all this leads to confusion with obscurantist tactics used by BoM to tell tall tales about impending climate doom. One cannot- as it stands- put any faith in the veracity of the climate record.
30
a Reuters Point Carbon story the MSM naturally rush to publish:
1 Sept: SMH: Reuters: China’s national carbon market to start in 2016, official says
China plans to roll out its national market for carbon permit trading in 2016, an official said Sunday, adding that the government is close to finalising rules for what will be the world’s biggest emissions trading scheme.
The world’s biggest-emitting nation, accounting for nearly 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, plans to use the market to slow its rapid growth in climate-changing emissions…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/chinas-national-carbon-market-to-start-in-2016-official-says-20140901-10arz1.html
pity it comes at the same time as this:
2 Sept: Beijing Review: China, Russia Start Construction of Gas Pipeline
The Russian part of the pipeline, officially named “the Power of Siberia” pipeline, has a designed capacity of transmitting 61 billion cubic meters of natural gas every year.
According to a CNPC-Gazprom contract, the Russian side will export 38 billion cubic meters of gas to China through the pipeline every year for a 30-year period starting from 2018…
Under the CNPC-Gazprom agreement, the Russian side will export 70 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China every year upon completion of both the East- and West-Route gas pipelines.
The two sides have also jointly built and put into operation a China-Russia oil pipeline in the Far East. In 2013, China imported 24.35 million tons of crude oil, 27.28 million tons of coal and 3.5 billion kwh of power from Russia.
***Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said earlier this year that Russia has the capacity of tripling or quadrupling the current volume of electricity and coal exports to China…
In the field of nuclear energy, the China-Russia joint venture Tianwan nuclear power plant in east China already has two reactors put into trial operation, and the other two are under construction…
http://www.bjreview.com.cn/se/txt/2014-09/02/content_638098.htm
00
Elsewhere in the news… the UN announces a new ‘Miss World Climate’ pageant…
the winner to proselytize to the faithful at the September
sciencereligious festivus:http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/29/3477305/young-women-keynote-climate-summit/
10
Oh dear.
Fancy a media outlet rushing to print and saying that a CO2 trading market will be introduced in China and not reading how it’s going to happen, and, umm, more probably, being totally clueless as to how that sort of market is supposed to actually work to be effective.
The proposed introduction of this Chinese CO2 trading market says this: (my bolding)
Sooooo, let me see here.
They only need buy credits if they emit more than their cap.
That went well! (do I really need add /sarc)
They know the total electricity generated for the plant, usually at a Capacity Factor of around 92 to 95%, and to get that total, those new USC coal fired plants in China will burn a set amount of coal, (at 282 grams per KWH) for a set amount of CO2 emitted.
If they exceed that emissions level, then they just buy the credits to cover that EXTRA only ….. but hey, that’s only WHEN they exceed their set total, not for the emissions which already go to make up the total.
What’s to stop the Authority from setting that emissions level at a higher Capacity Factor.
And hey, has anyone even thought about how they are going to measure these emissions, not just the extra, but ALL emissions of CO2 with any degree of REAL accuracy. Each grade of coal has ever so slightly different properties, so just saying it’s all the Best Grade coal at that 282 grams per KWH is just not that easy. Keep in mind that a plant like these new ones in China emit anything up to 18 to 20 million tons of CO2 each year.
Who measures those emissions to the degree of absolute accuracy required here?
This is a joke, not just this proposed Chinese Scheme, but all these ETS schemes.
If the problem is so damned radically dangerous, close the bl00dy plants down.
NOT ONE government ANYWHERE on Planet Earth has closed a coal fired power plant specifically because of the danger of CO2 emissions.
The ONLY thing they have done is to find ways to make money from it.
Funny about that, isn’t it?
Tony.
60
Look, I know it’s off topic, but when I read about those people who clamour for the introduction of any ETS, it makes my blood boil. They have no idea of what it actually means.
You’ve all pumped petrol into your car. A gallon of petrol weighs (approximately) 5.5 pounds, and you can pump around 8 gallons into your car in around 2 to 4 minutes, so around 44 pounds in that time, depending on how fast the pump works at your local petrol station.
Each unit at a typical coal fired power plant, say Bayswater, has four units, so you’ll need four 100% absolutely accurate measuring instruments to measure those CO2 emissions.
Each unit at full operation emits ONE TON of CO2 every 5 seconds, and yes, read that again, one ton every 5 seconds.
Measure that accurately.
Yeah! Right!
Tony.
30
Exactly the question I’ve asked before – how the hell do you accurately measure the CO2 emitted to the same standard required for retail sales -+/-0.3%? From experience with fuel dispensing pumps which measure at flow rates from 0.5l/min to 45 l/min (petrol is 0.72kg/l, diesel about 0.8) they can be within the limits when the calibration is checked and 5 or 10% out within minutes! So how can CO2 be measured accurately for years at the flow rates of even a small power plant? Or should we accept a lower standard and would everybody accept that lower standard when they buy their 30 litres of fuel or 200gm of bacon?
00
I think DESPERATION is the word for all the PR coming out of the warmist’s camp now.
20
The Mining Tax repeal just passed through the senate, and what are those strange popping sounds in the distance?
70
Watermelons exploding?
30
TonyfromOz –
i knew u’d pick up on the finer details of the Chinese “carbon market”. it’s a joke, but the MSM likes it! for starters, it’s an abstract idea that could be sent off somewhere for possible approval some day. meanwhile, in the real world:
2 Sept: Bloomberg: Tara Patel: Total Stands Firm on Russian Gas Project Amid Ukraine Escalation
Total SA (FP) is pushing ahead with a giant Russian natural gas project in the Arctic as escalating fighting in Ukraine raises the specter of tougher sanctions…
The head of Europe’s third-biggest oil company was speaking before a key meeting this weekend on the future of the $27 billion endeavor led by OAO Novatek. (NVTK) Designed to produce liquefied natural gas on the Yamal Peninsula, a province above the Arctic Circle estimated to hold enough fuel to meet global demand for five years, the project is central to Total’s plans to boost output and Russia’s bid to export more LNG.
The French company and China National Petroleum Corp. are partners with 20 percent stakes alongside the Russian company, with 60 percent…
“We have to do this project,” de Margerie said in the interview yesterday. “The reserves are there, the market is there and we need it. It is already almost half-completed. There are a lot of companies involved and many of them are American.”
His stance is in keeping with a long-held view that commerce and politics should be separate…
“Financing is the only problem,” de Margerie said yesterday, noting U.S. sanctions restrict funding and not the export of technology while European restrictions have so far left out Russian gas operations.
***Chinese banks could fill the gap left by U.S. lenders, he said, a possibility raised earlier this year by Novatek’s shareholder Timchenko. Chinese banks could provide as much as $20 billion for funding for the project, he said.
“Yes, they are there, they asked to come on board, we didn’t go get them,” de Margerie said. “By the end of the year we have to find a solution. We have four months.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-29/total-stands-firm-on-russian-gas-project-amid-ukraine-escalation.html
10
So, I wonder what happens as the Northern Winter starts, especially in the, umm, Ukraine. The current fighting is all well and good ….. in the Summer Months, but I’ll bet Ukraine hopes that the, well, whoever, steps in and protects poor little Ukraine from that big bully Russia.
Say, with Winter coming on, it’ll sure get cold around that area.
Perhaps the, well, whoever, will come out on the side of Ukraine, and in their sanctions, they, umm, may just force Russia to forego its debt for the Natural Gas it pipes into the Ukraine. So far, that NG debt is around $4 Billion, and Russia is asking for at least half of that and for Ukraine to actually pay for the gas it consumes.
Hmm, imagine the noise from the, umm, whoever, if that big bully Russia just turns off the gas, with Winter coming on, until they pay their debt.
Funny how there’s always an underlying reason for things like this, eh!
Don’t get me wrong here, military action on this scale is always uncalled for, but I sure wish people would learn a little about things like this before assuming this is just a fight for territory.
Don’t worry, though, I’m sure that the, umm, whoever, will force Russia to withdraw, force them to keep supplying gas at the lowest (Summer) price, or even no price at all, and then also force Russia to forego that debt.
Tony.
20
Engaged with Pitman through e-mail; usual pre-programmed stuff ;4degrees warming ;analogies relating to trains on tracks.Polite and a keen bush walker.Can’tsay if he drinks beer.
20
Him being into sustainability, I should imagine he drinks his urine directly from the source.
30
An excellent – may I say, inspired – 100% destruction of the cozy home that those people live in and hoped to continue to do so and everyone else’s expense.
As usual, there are some top-class comments, too.
00
I’m not sure Newton was around in the last two centuries!
00
People say more than they mean to say. Drs. Pitman and Alexander to the Australian this morning..
“ARC data showed the warming trend across Australia looked bigger without homogenization.” Love to see it, all of it.
“Adjusted data showed a cooling trend over parts of North West Australia, which wasn’t even seen in the raw data”. How exciting!
“Far from being a fudge ..data manipulation had the effect of reducing the apparent extreme temperature trends across Australia”. Point made. We have been saved from extreme weather by homogenization. We are grateful and so glad we have this assurance that it is the opposite of a fudge.
The fact is this privileged pair have the “unmanipulated” results in front of them and we have their solemn word that we are actually much better off because it would have been hotter without their expertise. The question is, who owns this data?
So we believe you. Now just show the people of Australia the unabridged, unhomogenized, unmodified, uncorrected, untruncated, unabridged, unadjusted temperatures look like. Please. After all, seriously the BOM is the public service and we are the employers and temperatures are not state secrets or commercially privileged, are they?
50
Or to put it another way
“Adjusted data showed a cooling trend over parts of North West Australia, which wasn’t even seen in the raw data”.
Great, but how can we be sure that adjusted data did not show a heating trend over the rest of Australia which wasn’t even seen in the raw data”?
30
I am still amazed. How can the most wonderful homogenization and careful data editing and selection yield (cooling) “trends which were not seen in the raw data”? Deus ex machina. It should worry every scientist that such a thing is possible. What’s next, cold fusion?
30
And if that is possible, what is to stop a rogue scientist from doing the exact reverse and creating global warming where there was none? Peer review? How does peer review work without the data?
20
‘The fact is this privileged pair’
Its not clear to me that those ‘in charge’ now have done all the corrections themselves to the raw data. This could explain the generalities of their response.
They are still looking for everything that has happened.
Usually with professionals it is possible to ask for specific performance.
It must be possible to ask specific questions about particular sites and expect a reply.
This could be done by a Ministerial,by FOI or more transparently by an enquiry where the raw data, method[s] of homoginisation and resultants are tabulated and expressed in a time line form.
Our weather data is a precious and critical resource.
It must not be corrupted.
Without it there is no possibility of creating models of climate, with predictive accuracy, essential to our agricultural production and urban built development.
As a first step,all raw data and consequent algorithms and their results must be placed on line.
There should be no problem with this as the data belongs to the Federal Government.
Otherwise our science, our respect for the scientific community, will be open to disrepute.
20
It is very interesting that comments on this article closed unusually quickly, even for an article on global warming, where the moderators are very quick to close down discussion once people start to question the tenets of the discussion.
This is a continuing frustration on The Conversation, a publicly funded institution which costs taxpayers a cool eight million dollars a year. All of the articles are decidedly biased to the left and Climate Science is absolutely sacrosanct and held closely to the chest of the author and other “climate” scientists. While the pages are supposed to encourage discussion, no useful discussion on climate science is allowed and those pointing out too many truths, very quickly have their posts removed.
John Nicol
11
Pitman reportedly says: “Anyone who thinks they have found fault with the Bureau’s methods should document them thoroughly and reproducibly in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.” Fine, but where are the published, peer-reviewed research papers that describe BoM’s homogenisation methods? This is a genuine question. I have seen reference to a “M&W09” paper in the thread. Can someone please supply a pointer to this, or any other journal paper on homogenisation? Thanks in anticipation..
00
Lazio #45
>”where are the published, peer-reviewed research papers that describe BoM’s homogenisation methods? This is a genuine question. I have seen reference to a “M&W09″ paper in the thread. Can someone please supply a pointer to this, or any other journal paper on homogenisation?”
Sure. There are 2 methods: M&W09 which is a paper and the basis for the homogenization method; and PM95 which is a statistical technique used for the adjustment method.
For much more (titles, descriptions, provenance, links, etc) go to #38.2 in the ‘Hiding something’ thread here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/hiding-something-bom-throws-out-bourkes-hot-historic-data-changes-long-cooling-trend-to-warming/#comment-1554309
Both methods are implemented by software code. BOM has said it will make the code publicly available but I don’t think it has yet (I’m still looking into this).
00
Thanks Richard. I have been initially interested in the provenance of claims of “peer review” which are paraded with such unction in the Pitman article on the Conversation. The CAWC Technical Report #049 (2012) is clearly not peer reviewed in the sense recognised by any academic or researcher – independent and anonymous reviewers giving advice to an Editor of a publication outlet as to whether a submission is worthy of publication to the science community. To put it more bluntly, it would not count in the HERDCE process.
M&W09 is a peer reviewed publication, which, as you point out suggests a method for detecting anomalies (not for ‘correcting’ them). PM95 is not a citation of a research publication. It identifies an algorithm. The provenance of this algorithm appears to lie in two publications: a Symposium paper by Blair Trewin in 2001 (status of actual peer review unknown) and a paper in Journal of Climate by Della-Marta and Wanner in 2006. The TR says that Trewin has developed an algorithm “similar conceptually” to those reported in these two publications. (I can think of “similar conceptions” to the idea of a God, but whatever..)
So, the “peer reviewed” application of previous techniques to the homogenisation of Australian temperature datasets is a non peer reviewed Technical Report.
But tracks have been covered by a publication of Trewin (as a sole author, very unusual nowadays in research publication) in the International Journal of Climatology, May 2013. This appears to be a submission of his TR to a journal – I have no criticism of this, happens all the time – which has submitted the descriptions of the algorithms to peer review.
What needs to be understood though is that publication peer review is not a validation process. It simply guides an Editor to make decisions over publication. The criteria involved include originality of the research (not plagiarised), novelty (not boring), rigour (not an idiot), and of interest to the community (not yet another..). I am sure Trewin passed this test in his submission to ICJ.
But now obvious anomalies are being uncovered that cast doubt on the algorithms that Trewin has devised. In any other academic/research community these issues would be teased out through robust discussions at workshops and/or the discussion pages of journals, and improvements would evolve. But for the green/left mafia it is about circling the wagons and demanding “peer review”. Why don’t these people grow up and think about the quest for understanding rather than an agenda..?
Lazlo
00
Isn’t that UNSW Department of Climate about running out of new superlatives to keep calling itself by ?
00
Peer Review of the technique used is not the same as Quality Assurance of the data.
In industry, when manufacturers are certified by third parties as complying with the ISO 9000 Quality Management System, that does not exempt them from having to conduct Quality Assurance on the products they produce, nor from having to deal with customer complaints that items produced are non-conforming. Being ISO certified is not a guarantee that the product produced is fully conforming to specification or to the contract. Instead it just means that one is buying from a company where one can have confidence that it can produce a quality product.
But it appears that the BOM offer no evidence that they have conducted any Quality Assurance of their product – the homogenised data – nor do they deign to investigate customer complaints that parts of their product appears to be non-conforming.
In my opinion, any creditable organisation should have no problem doing so.
Regards.
00
It’s not fiddling; it’s temperature tamperationization, quite a different thing entirely, very sciency and, indeed, robust. We’d explain it to you lot, but there’s little chance you’d understand our clever and stunning verbiage, since you aren’t among the supereducated. Even if you were, you’re not among the hierarchy permitted to read it. Just trust us. We’re only thinking of your best interests.
/s
00