The abominable Karl et al paper came out in the nick of time to pretend that the “pause” didn’t happen. We knew the paper was junk thanks to hard sleuthing, especially from Ross McKitrick, now Dr John Bates, a pal of Judith Curry is speaking up from the inside to confirm that the paper used bad and unapproved datasets which were so flawed they have already been revised. The data wasn’t archived either, which is a mandatory requirement. Bates retired from NOAA and was given a medal for setting up the “binding” standards which were ignored for the sake of generating headlines in time for Paris.
David Rose at the DailyMail:
Exposed — How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data:
In an exclusive interview, Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, who was until last year director of the NOAA section that produces climate data – the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) – of ‘insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximised warming and minimised documentation… in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy’.
Dr Bates was one of two Principal Scientists at NCEI, based in Asheville, North Carolina.
Breitbart: Whistle-Blower: ‘Global Warming’ Data Manipulated Before Paris Conference
by Thomas D Williams
According to reports, NOAA has now decided to replace the sea temperature dataset just 18 months after it was issued, because it used “unreliable methods which overstated the speed of warming.”
A reported increase in sea surface temperatures was due to upwards adjustments of readings from fixed and floating buoys to agree with water temperature measured by ships, according to Bates.
Bates said that NOAA had good data from buoys but then “they threw it out and ‘corrected’ it by using the bad data from ships. You never change good data to agree with bad, but that’s what they did – so as to make it look as if the sea was warmer.”
The land temperature dataset, on the other hand, was the victim of software bugs that rendered its conclusions “unstable,” Bates said.
The nitty gritty at Judith Curry’s where Karl et al is referred to as K15.
Climate scientists versus climate data
by John Bates
A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center.
I read with great irony recently that scientists are “frantically copying U.S. Climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump” (e.g., Washington Post 13 December 2016). As a climate scientist formerly responsible for NOAA’s climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document their data.
The computer ate my homework:
So, in every aspect of the preparation and release of the datasets leading into K15, we find Tom Karl’s thumb on the scale pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming and minimize documentation. I finally decided to document what I had found using the climate data record maturity matrix approach. I did this and sent my concerns to the NCEI Science Council in early February 2016 and asked to be added to the agenda of an upcoming meeting. I was asked to turn my concerns into a more general presentation on requirements for publishing and archiving. Some on the Science Council, particularly the younger scientists, indicated they had not known of the Science requirement to archive data and were not aware of the open data movement. They promised to begin an archive request for the K15 datasets that were not archived; however I have not been able to confirm they have been archived. I later learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure, leading to a tongue-in-cheek joke by some who had worked on it that the failure was deliberate to ensure the result could never be replicated.
How to solve this? —
h/t David, Scott, Pat, Clipe and Don A.
REFERENCE
T.R. Karl; A. Arguez; B. Huang; J.H. Lawrimore; M.J. Menne; T.C. Peterson; R.S. Vose; H.-M. Zhang (2015) “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus,” by at National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Asheville, NC; J.R. McMahon at LMI in McLean, VA.
I’ve read all those reference over the last couple days. It initially sounded very exciting, but a long read through Climate Ect muddies my thoughts. It doesn’t seem to be as obvious as the initial report suggests, though I do hope the authorities takes it seriously. The whole field needs a good tidy-up.
116
Watts is running the story too, here’s a graph.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/pausebuster-dataset.jpg
84
The story is getting a lot of traction in many places, except of course, the MSM. WUWT has kept it as the top story on the main page for days now.
62
“After the paper was published, the US House of Representatives Science Committee launched an inquiry into its Pausebuster claims. NOAA refused to comply with subpoenas demanding internal emails from the committee chairman, the Texas Republican Lamar Smith, and falsely claimed that no one had raised concerns about the paper internally.”
I think that the change of Administration will bring a lot more bite to the Science Committee. NOAA will now have to front them and explain why they have lost all the data and their results are not reproducible. The next question will be “why should we pay your salaries anymore?”
93
And that would be a very fair question…..
30
Have you guys seen this 5 minute simple explanation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnyX32nkYBs
What are scientists supposed to do when they find a way to improve their analysis but the public is going to go nuts if they don’t like the result? That’s not asked in the video. I am asking. People don’t seem to want to understand the problem, just find someone to hang. Anyway, the full link to the article explaining the new studies is https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-mail-sundays-astonishing-evidence-global-temperature-rise
10
There is at least another side to the Bates/Karl story http://icarus-maynooth.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/on-mail-on-sunday-article-on-karl-et-al.html?spref=tw
10
Bad graph. The author of the graph perhaps forgot to consider that the 2 graphs being superimposed used different reference points. I think an update to the article clarified that issue under the graph, but the author still kept the graph the old way.
If you fix their reference points to match (apples to apples), then the graphs look strikingly similar at that zoom level. You have to zoom at the later years to see a mild difference.
*****
BTW, the new NOAA procedures are roughly explained by a short 5 minute youtube video titled “Recent Ocean Warming has been Underestimated”. If you use only buoys or only ship or only satellite you basically get the new NOAA rises in the 21st century. The problem was in stitching the several different temp sources together as has always been done. The old NOAA gave a fake “cooling” effect that is not seen if we just look at satellite, or just buoys, or just ships. The new NOAA way gives a lot more weight to the higher quality buoy data so loses most of the problems. In the past, when most data was ship, it was not a problem, but as the primary load switches from apple-gatherers to orange-gatherers, we get fake warming or cooling (cooling in this case). If anyone has a counter argument please link. I find the video discussion (and associated explanations on website) convincing.
BTW, the new higher quality temps show not much of a hiatus at all, but the surface temp in general is not linear with the heat being taken by the planet. We are still taking extra heat but some is going to melt ocean ice, some warms the oceans, some warms the air but the sloshing of the different systems (as oceans mix at slow pace etc) causes surface temperatures to be unstable and noisy rather than monotonic.
It’s always a challenge to stitch data together from different sources and proxies, but what are we supposed to do? Not use the wealth of old information and say nothing about our planet’s history just because they didn’t have top quality thermometers back then? Or we can try to stitch and always look to improve the stitch quality.
10
‘The whole field needs a good tidy-up.’ ……the whole field needs the rubbish bin and its advocates and propagators need jail and rock breaking hard time!
194
Are you referring to climate science or The Daily Mail?
[NOTE: Russell is hiding a link to v v atts up (his site) under the words Daily Mail. Which “buoys” and which “satellites” is the new NOAA data adjusted up to? Probably RSS which contains data from a bad satellite with spurious warming (see Roy Spencers site). Does he mean the Karl et al Buoys (corrected by a number with an error that is 17 times larger than the measurement) or Argo (delete those cold records)? – Jo]
10
From the Karl et al. paper abstract: ‘… here, we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than those reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature’
The NCDC anomaly graph shows the result, from “slowdown” to no “slowdown”.
This is only the latest in ‘adjustments’ to this century surface record, adjustments made since 2008 all on the positive side of the ledger.
162
Prof Humlum’s excellent website also shows how the surface and satellite records have deviated, the latter showing a definite flattening of the trend, the former the result of ‘pause-busting’ adjustments.
What makes this incident so notable is the blatant political involvement although that’s an undercurrent in the entire surface record.
173
Satellite and ground measure different things. Both have upward trend but different shapes. Measure temp just outside an oven and inside, you get different values and different patterns. The surface has warmed. The satellites measure different region and that has a warming trend as well.
10
Greg,
Muddied thoughts are something I can sympathize with. If I’ve felt anything at all it’s been muddied, as in dragged trough the mud for years. If there’s a reset button at the EPA, NASA GISS, NOAA, CRU… then I hope Trump can manage to push all of them and we can start from scratch again.
Actually it would be really nice if there was one master reset button. Zap! Reboot and restart climate change research from the point of view that we want to know if it’s happening or not instead of the assumption that it is happening and we need a scarier headline every day to get the attention of the masses.
I’ve been hoping that Trump could be that reset button. But I don’t know if he’ll end up having any impact at all. He’s apparently looking at a wholesale revolt against cleaning house. And presidents don’t always have the power we think they do.
And I think I need a long vacation from the whole mess, lest I lose my sanity. 😉
71
And above all else, if we could only reset one wheel in the whole climate change machine, I wold want it to be the UN. That wheel drives every other gear and wheel in the whole climate change apparatus. Without the influence of the UN and the IPCC where would they be? Dead in the water and about to be overwhelmed by the next big wave.
90
I find once the Left gets hold of it, its like a bunch of seagulls fighting over a bag of chips…..much squarking, poop flying everywhere and all thats left is a mess and nothing of value remains.
Science has been “Leftied” – its been trashed, its credibility destroyed, torn apart and people now have lost faith in it. Problem is, when hard science is gone, only politics remains, which is infinitely worse….
You can see how the Left controls stuff – they trash it, then move on.
The Left are inherently a waste of oxygen.
52
O.S I find it amusing- if I can find it so that most of the establishment science accepted the reality of “the pause”- then a series of papers are released that rebut all that. Oh, there really was no pause after all.Satellite Radiosonde. Forget about it;only denialists regard that data.
40
This video explains why NOAA’s changes are likely and improvement. They did their own analysis using a different approach and agree with NOAA. Yes, sometimes science improves measurements even after scientists accepted earlier measurements. It happens all the time, and sometimes the improvements are not within the error range of the old values while usually they are. Eg, is the evolution of the value of the speed of light.
00
Roy Hogue February 7, 2017 at 2:45 am
“Greg, Muddied thoughts are something I can sympathize with. If I’ve felt anything at all it’s been muddied, as in dragged trough the mud for years. If there’s a reset button at the EPA, NASA GISS, NOAA, CRU… then I hope Trump can manage to push all of them and we can start from scratch again.”
OK. but ‘we’ cannot ‘start from scratch again’. Whatever ‘physical’ that had some learning, has been so corrupted by the SJW, that the our scratch has been destroyed. We now have only BS
Actually it would be really nice if there was one master reset button. Zap! Reboot and restart climate change research from the point of view that we want to know if it’s happening or not instead of the assumption that it is happening and we need a scarier headline every day to get the attention of the masses.
OW such a magnificent fool entity! The Scottish highlanders actually encouraged such! No need for earthling anything only subservient peons! Now what? since those others will use earthlings as ‘food’
21
You’re right of course. But don’t deprive me of hope, however small it may be. 😉
21
Sorry Greg, but as someone who works for Government I find your stance too credulous. Records are the be all end all when it comes to Government. Without good record keeping (i.e. archiving) the system fails badly. No one who has been through just the first day indoctrination to record keeping would be so foolhardy as not to back up (to records/archives) significant work. When I email a mate about getting lunch somewhere, that’s not a record. When I do anything even related to my job that is a record. End of story. Records need to be filed (electronically these days) and suitably archived.
So when someone working for a Government department says the records, data or whatever for a critical project have been lost, there is the stench of corruption all over it. Such things simply never happen by accident.
81
Agreed. Back in the day, programs had to be copied and archived. If some days or months of your coding work got lost in a accident, you got to rewrite it before doing anything else. If that’s not OK, then keep copies next time, Grasshopper. Why should anybody believe the thing worked right in the first place if they can’t look it over?
20
Wow … at least one person think that good government record-keeping is a bad thing. The stupidity of leftists is self-evident.
11
I’d suggest that, if US climate scientists are reacting “frantically” to the change of administration, that indicates that they are thoroughly politicised, as has long been suspected. As we have seen in the Hillary Clinton case, adherents of the Obama administration had somewhat inconsistent accounts concerning their approach to computer backups.
Lois Lerner, at the IRS, tried harder. It was just a shame that every single backup ever made of her communications was struck by lightning simultaneously.
The best way for the climate scientists to ensure that their data can’t disappear is to dump it on to the web and make it as public as possible. Somehow, I don’t see that happening.
252
I think there will be an avalanche of job losses in the USA Climate Change Industry (fully Govt funded sector that is) which mushroomed under the Obama Administration e.g. NOAA, NASA etc. The Trump Administration is sharpening its knives no doubt.
201
King Geo,
Let’s hope so, and that Turnbull (Oz Prime Minister) and his ministers supporting funding to Oz universities for CAGW take note!
121
If you haven’t seen it already, Myron Ebell’s Q&A in London, in front of the Foreign Press Association, demonstrates your point rather well. Scribblers from publications that exist only in their own imagination were having panic attacks, as Mr Ebell, very politely and calmly, responded to questions about possible new trends and the hacks envisaged their careers evaporating.
The Beebyanka’s Roger Harrabin, true to form, tried to take over proceedings, but was brilliantly overruled by Benny Peiser, of the GWPF, who hosted the event. The URL for Josh’s article is here (Josh cartoon first, with the full video following):
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2017/1/30/myron-ebell-in-transit-cartoon-notes-by-josh.html#comments
111
Bring on “Climate Nuremberg” as soon as possible…..watch what happens to Collaborators….
51
And…ouch….
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/06/delingpole-noaa-scandal-gives-trump-the-perfect-excuse-to-drain-the-climate-swamp/
So NOAA deliberately fiddled the climate data to hide the “pause” in global warming in time for the UN’s COP21 Paris talks.
Really, this whistleblowing revelation couldn’t have come at a better time for Donald Trump.
In the field of energy and climate, President Trump has said that there is a massive swamp that needs draining.
But his efforts are being resisted at every turn by all those lying scientists, bent politicians, rent-seeking businessmen, and Soros-funded activist groups who insist: “What swamp? What crocodiles? What leeches? Nothing to see here!”
What the whistleblowing NOAA insider John Bates has just done is prove beyond reasonable doubt what some of us have long claimed: that from NASA GISS and NOAA across the pond to the UEA and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, the world’s leading temperature data sets have been hijacked by climate activists and abused to advance a political agenda.
Here at Breitbart we smelt a rat from the moment NOAA released its dodgy, “Pause-busting” study two years ago.
As we reported, with perhaps a hint of snark, in ‘Hide the Hiatus!’. How the Climate Alarmists Eliminated The Inconvenient Pause In Global Warming the paper seemed to have been produced by two alarmist shills at NOAA – Tom Karl and Thomas Peterson – with the express purpose of confounding sceptics in the run up to Paris.
The thrust of Karl’s paper is this: that far from staying flat since 1998, global temperatures have carried on rising. It’s just that scientists haven’t noticed before because they’ve been looking in the wrong place – on land, rather than in the sea where all the real heat action is happening.
And how did Karl et al notice what everyone else has missed until now? Well, by using a specialised scientific technique called “getting your excuses in early before the Paris climate conference in December.”
Essentially, this technique involves making adjustments to the raw temperature data (sound familiar?) and discovering – lo! – that the sceptics were wrong and the alarmists were right all along.
Karl’s paper makes much of the fact that the methods used for gathering sea temperature data have changed over the years: in the old days it used to involve buckets; more recently, engine intake thermometers. Hence his excuse for these magical “adjustments”. Apparently (amazingly, conveniently), the measurements used since 1998 have been “running cold” and therefore needed correcting in a (handy) upward direction in order to show what has really been happening to global warming. Once you realise this – global warming turns out to be as real and present and dangerous as ever it was.
In October 2015, we followed up with a story headlined: NOAA Attempts To Hide The Pause In Global Warming: The Most Disgraceful Cover Up Since Climategate.
This reported on how NOAA had refused to give up its documents in response to a subpoena by Rep Lamar Smith (R-Texas) who also smelt a rat – and just needed some raw data to prove it.
Now, NOAA insider John Bates has provided the smoking gun to Mail on Sunday reporter David Rose.
In an exclusive interview, Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, who was until last year director of the NOAA section that produces climate data – the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) – of ‘insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximised warming and minimised documentation… in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy’.
Dr Bates was one of two Principal Scientists at NCEI, based in Asheville, North Carolina.
Official delegations from America, Britain and the EU were strongly influenced by the flawed NOAA study as they hammered out the Paris Agreement – and committed advanced nations to sweeping reductions in their use of fossil fuel and to spending £80 billion every year on new, climate-related aid projects.
Bates enlarges on this at Judith Curry’s blog. His critique is generally quite arid, measured and scientific. (Bates is a proper scientist; this is what scientists are like…) But then he delivers the killer blow here: [by K15 he means the paper by Karl et al]
Gradually, in the months after K15 came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his ‘thumb on the scale’—in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets—in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.”
22
Steve, “unfortunately” NOAA did the right thing since their newer processing of the data is closer to reality. You get a similar result if you just use buoys or just use ships or just use satellites as other researchers have done since. The problem is in stitching all of those things together. It’s been a few years in the making the new changes to switch from the old inferior NOAA way to the improved way. Bates did not work on the same area and is also complaining about a technical point. There are more sides to this story I am sure you know.
00
It’s a shame lightning didn’t strike Lois Lerner. Just think about the details that could have brought to light.
40
Good ol’James Delingpole has a great column at Breitbart. Must read!
This is exactly the opening Trump can exploit to swing Thor’s Hammer down!
This spells the end of junk science in the U.S.A.!!!!!
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/06/delingpole-noaa-scandal-gives-trump-the-perfect-excuse-to-drain-the-climate-swamp/
Oh, one more thing. Whoever is in charge or witting participants in this scam in OZ had better start learning to flip burgers and make cappuccinos.
31
Well, well …
On the previous Unthreaded I had added an analytical comment on this issue under several others which also referred to it.
My comment went straight into “moderation”, never to see the light of day.
I did wonder, briefly, if this was because there was a new thread in line on the issue and thunder was not to be stolen (btw, my original line was that I had not previously heard of dogs eating computers as well as homework).
Censoring that Unthreaded comment was rather unpleasant of you. At the very least, it should be liberated from limbo and published in this thread, along with its’ date and time.
(Did a look at the Spam and Trash list,couldn’t find it.Can you provide the data and time frame for me,to look for it?) CTS
46
Ian. the auto censor is bizzare and erratic to say the least.
If you hit moderation for some unknown reason, email [email protected]
include the time date at the top of the comment in the email
and one of the mods will either fix it when they can get time (volunteers iirc.. and may I say, they do a good job 😉 ), snip it a bit or let you know why they are not going to publish it.
Cheers.. and be patient 🙂 Like I am 😉
106
“snip it a bit or let you know why they are not going to publish it.”
Unlike sites like scienceofdoom which published an article trashing an article of mine and wouldn’t allow my comment explaining what they were doing wrong or even let me know why my comment (which was nothing but science) wasn’t allowed. COWARDS!!! They consider the truth too painful to acknowledge. No wonder they’re loosing the debate.
51
You can spite them and include the link here now.
00
believe me, Ian, I have had MANY comments go into moderation..
…. quite often deservedly so 😉
Sometimes, not.
[Cheer up Andy. We really do love you. Honestly, you add lots of color to the life of a moderator. :-)] AZ
126
*chuckle*
Shouting can get a bloke into trouble, so I go out of my way to talk with a low voice.
The auto mod claw pulls me up occasionally, so I go on strike until my words are liberated.
41
I’m in moderation right now. (
50
@ AZ… 🙂
21
I am absolutely, positively (well, 97% at least) sure, it’s a lukewarmer conspiracy…
33
Ian,
I can vouch for the fact that dogs don’t eat computers. If they did I think it would have shown up in computer science literature somewhere by now. I doubt they eat homework either but that’s still under investigation pending a test of every known dog breed in the world, of which there are a surprising number. 😉
30
You have 8 authors, and the computer code and data were only on one computer.
That implies that NONE of the other authors looked at or test the code or data.
It also implies that Tom Karl is probably the slackest scientist in the world.
I know last major project I was on had multiple redundancies of data on site and off site,
and redundancies of code and working code version also stored on raid systems on and off site
Heck, even Dropbox or MS Onedrive could have been used..
But NOPE. Just one copy of an un-validated load of what appears to be total crap.
378
Maybe there was no data and no code ! They did what Harry Harris did, just made it up !.
See “harry readme.txt” in the climategate files.
141
AndyG55
An imperative if you have valued computer files, photos whatever, is to implement backup. to insure against various potential system failures. I routinely backup on USB flash drives as a matter of course on relatively trivial stuff.
In the case of the Pause Buster I find it hard to believe that no one thought it necessary to backup the very important massive files.
External storage would cost less than $200 to insure the “research” costing I guess hundreds of thousands of dollars by eight “scientists”?
130
Yes, Karl ‘et al,’
all eight of them
and not one of ’em
backed up code and data…ahem!
140
Yes, Karl ‘et al,’
all eight of them,
and not one of ’em
backed up code ‘n data,
… ahem!
30
Sorry fer repeat, please delete
one of them. (
10
Just backing up?
190
A demonstration of redundancy redundancy.
20
That’s why the Irish wear 2 condoms – tobesure tobesure!! boom boom 🙂 🙂
10
Best comment so far. Thumbs up. Karl should have been laughed off the stage at the time, not allowed to retire. And, of course, everybody in management should be immediately fired, and warned off of science entirely.
115
The good thing is that those 8 guys who put their name to this paper, without checking Tom Karl’s farcical non-science, have THEIR names attached to it, and if criminal proceedings are ever brought, they will be equally liable 🙂
That is a HAPPY thought. 🙂
106
Watching QandA tonight….ouch….Leftists..being kicked around the floor on every topic…and they knew it too…the public has turned on them.
Also listening to Andrews- the message that came across was simply that people will just have to put up with the economic disaster of renewables forced upon them and be good socialists ……
You vill do as you are told!!!!! All hail glorious fairy story of socialist utopia!
113
Or forced unionization of the CFA….my relatives who live in rural victoria…I cant print how they think the nasty business of the CFA has gone.
The general message to Leftists – leave people alone, stop meddling with stuff that works – do not give it a “leftie” ( akin to a wdegie, but permenantly dmaging and not useful in any way…)
30
Tom Karl might be the slackest scientist in the world but until we read about this in the Left media he got what he wanted.
10
Don’t think they will save as much as they delete somehow .
131
Oh ! Karl.
You are but a tool.
Tomas we love you though you don’t treat us cool,
You heat us and you make us cry,
But if you ever leave we think you’d have us fry.
81
as this is one more of those intended/unintended consequences of the CAGW scam, figure i’ll post it here rather than return to “unthreaded”.
lengthy, but well worth a read:
5 Feb: LA Times: Californians are paying billions for power they don’t need
We’re using less electricity. Some power plants have even shut down. So why do state officials keep approving new ones?
By Ivan Penn and Ryan Menezes | Reporting from Yuba City, Calif.
The bucolic orchards of Sutter County north of Sacramento had never seen anything like it: a visiting governor and a media swarm — all to christen the first major natural gas power plant in California in more than a decade.
At its 2001 launch, the Sutter Energy Center was hailed as the nation’s cleanest power plant. It generated electricity while using less water and natural gas than older designs.
A year ago, however, the $300-million plant closed indefinitely, just 15 years into an expected 30- to 40-year lifespan. The power it produces is no longer needed — in large part because state regulators approved the construction of a plant just 40 miles away in Colusa that opened in 2010…
Although California uses 2.6% less electricity annually from the power grid now than in 2008, residential and business customers together pay $6.8 billion more for power than they did then. The added cost to customers will total many billions of dollars over the next two decades, because regulators have approved higher rates for years to come so utilities can recoup the expense of building and maintaining the new plants, transmission lines and related equipment, even if their power isn’t needed…
“We overbuilt the system because that was the way we provided that degree of reliability,” explained Michael Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission. “Redundancy is important to reliability.”
Some of the excess capacity, he noted, is in preparation for the retirement of older, inefficient power plants over the next several years. The state is building many new plants to try to meet California environmental standards requiring 50% clean energy by 2030, he said…READ ALL
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-electricity-capacity/#nt=notification
71
One more example of scientific malpractice committed in the name of “global warming”. When you think it cannot get worse, they prove you wrong and sink to an even lower low.
272
I’ve been kicking around ideas for a novel for some time now. And I’m constantly confronted with actions from people that I would have never in my stupidest mood written into a story.
And yet I see the real world is far stupider than I would have dared to imagine. Some of the Hillary supporter YouTubes are dumber than dumb, it’s stunning to see it in print.
20
Thank you Joanne for a very nice presentation that is I think more succinctly inclusive than some others doing the rounds in rational websites globally.
IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE IF THE ABC/BBC AND OTHER ORACLES OF TRUTH WILL ENTHUSIASTICALLY BROADCAST IT!
182
Of course the SBC/BBC won’t broadcast it. But I think you already knew the answer.
100
Ah, the analogies of cli-sci history.
– selection of data on basis of desired result,
– use of flawed methodology,
– failure to archive data for peer evaluation
or replication … Oh man(n)!
30
One would hope Trump will launch a full investigation into all this and if applicable send a lot of scientists to prison for committing fraud using public monies. Enough of this false climate change nonsense.
30
The House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology seems to be having a look at it.
https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records
90
el gordo mentioned this on “unthreaded” and I posted a link, but I think it needs to go here as well.
“our Chief Scientist” projecting:
6 Feb: Australian: Julie Hare: Trump’s scientific censorship remiscient of Stalin: Finkel
Australia’s chief scientist has likened the Trump administration political censoring of documents and research on the US’s Environmental Protection Agency’s website to Stalinist Russia.
In a speech to a gathering of scientists and policy experts at Australian National University this afternoon, chief scientist Alan Finkel said “science is literally under attack”.
Dr Finkel said a Trump administration edict that all scientific data published on the EPA’s website must undergo review by political appointees “was inadvisable and will certainly cause long-term harm”.
He said the move was reminiscent of political interference in scientific endeavours in Stalin’s Russia.
He said one of Joseph Stalin’s was beholden to the idea propagated by one of his science advisers Trofim Lysenko…
Dr Finkel said he was proud to be chief scientist of a country in which he had never been “been told by a Prime Minister or a Minister what to say”…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/trumps-scientific-censorship-remiscient-of-stalin-finkel/news-story/4c03954745b408ce8e427dd86548d3c0
does Finkel keep his job?
110
I think that Dr Finkel has seriously misjudged the world as it is in the the greatest democracies that the world has known.
Australia is a democracy in the mould of Britain and the USA and his lack of appreciation of the current mood is.not going to do him much good.
Who appointed him?
KK
80
All the reports of the UN’s IPCC are filtered and edited only by political appointees who write the summary. Where is the outrage?
60
A very good observation, tour de France.
The to-do list for a contrite Australia must examine how and why representatives are chosen to speak and act for us. We have been getting poor value for decades.
You can see the problem if you contrast our international dealings about environmental topics with those about defence.
The chattering class was much excluded from defence until the last decade when we saw Muslim outreach, LGBT etc, alleged racism, obedience to Gaia increasingly in the defence spotlight oversea as well as here.
In the olden days the defence spotlight shone on how to first kill those who would want to kill us. Now we favour ways to kill by submarines that are PC and without risk of kills by accidental leakage of nuclear radiation from the engines.
Why has the collective Australian mind grown so lacking in analytical capability?
Geoff
20
Such things were mentioned often from day one. But the UN reports are for other politicians, and they liked what they read. So, in the end, everything continued just as it was intended unto the logical conclusion we are now faced with.
20
I’m very much enjoying the way various anti-democratic malcontents are calling Trump a fascist in one sentence, and a communist in the next.
If only we could harness that ignorance and outrage to make electricity, it’d be the cheapest form of renewable energy there is…
30
We would have a perpetual ignorance machine, oh wait!!!
10
a dozen or so tweets from the likes of Michael Moore and fellow ultra progressive leftist David Corn makes MANY PEOPLE’S MINDS for FakeNews USA Today:
5 Feb: USA Today: Angry fans are blaming Trump for ‘jinxing’ the Patriots
By: Luke Kerr-Dineen
UPDATE: They were all super wrong.
ORIGINAL: Even before the game was over, many New England fans were still very irritated about something that happened hours earlier.
It involved President Donald Trump who, in an interview with Bill O’Reilly ahead of Super Bowl 51 coverage, said the Patriots would win by eight points against “the other team”…
And that, in MANY PEOPLE’S MINDS, suceeded in jinxing the Pats…
TWEET: Michael Moore: As second half begins, Trump says Patriots are up by 27. Spicer challenges press to prove that Falcons have even crossed the goal line once.
TWEET: David Corn (Washington DC bureau chief of Mother Jones, MSNBC analyst & author of Showdown and HUBRIS):
I hope Tom Brady did vote for Trump. #SuperBowl
Richard Mello: @DavidCornDC The Trump jinx.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/02/donald-trump-new-england-patriots-atlanta-falcons-jinx
Trump doesn’t like making predictions (unlike CAGW alarmists!)
5 Feb: The Hill: Mallory Shelbourne: Trump predicts Patriots will win Super Bowl by 8 points
“Well, I hate to make predictions, but I’ll say, I don’t even know what are the odds, I guess it’s pretty even, so I’ll say the Patriots will win by 8 points,” Trump told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.
“Well I like Bob Kraft. I like Coach Belichick and Tom Brady’s my friend,” Trump said…
50
my superbowl comment was meant for “unthreaded” – apologies.
btw DrudgeReport featured David Rose’s Daily Mail article prominently today.
some thorough reporting, as usual, from Valerie Richardson, which backs up ***Phillip Bratby’s comment #10:
5 Feb: Washington Times: Valerie Richardson: Climate change whistleblower alleges NOAA manipulated data to hide global warming ‘pause’
Former federal climatologist John Bates blasts 2015 NOAA study as other scientists defend its conclusions
The climate change debate went nuclear Sunday over a whistleblower’s explosive allegation that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association manipulated data to advance a political agenda by hiding the global warming “pause.”
In an article on the Climate Etc. blog, John Bates, who retired last year as principal scientist of the National Climatic Data Center, accused the lead author of the 2015 NOAA “pausebuster” report of trying to “discredit” the hiatus through “flagrant manipulation of scientific integrity guidelines and scientific publication standards.”
In addition, Mr. Bates told the Daily [U.K.] Mail etc…
Zeke Hausfather, Berkeley Earth climate scientist, said in a Sunday “factcheck” on the CarbonBrief blog that the Karl paper’s conclusions “have been validated by independent data from satellites, buoys and Argo floats and many other independent groups.”…
***Meanwhile, the whistleblowing prompted a “we-told-you-so” moment from Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee who have long suspected the Obama administration of retroactively fiddling with climate data in order to erase the 1998-2013 pause in global temperature increases.
“Now that Dr. Bates has confirmed that there were heated disagreements within NOAA about the quality and transparency of the data before publication, we know why NOAA fought transparency and oversight at every turn,” said Chairman Lamar Smith in a Sunday statement…
The panel launched an investigation into the NOAA pausebuster report after whistleblowers said the study was “rushed to publication before underlying data issues were resolved to help influence public debate about the so-called Clean Power Plan and upcoming Paris climate conference.”
“Dr. Bates‘ revelations and NOAA’s obstruction certainly lend credence to what I’ve expected all along — that the Karl study used flawed data, was rushed to publication in an effort to support the president’s climate change agenda and ignored NOAA’s own standards for scientific study,” Mr. Smith said.
Mr. Bates said he decided to come forward after reading a Washington Post article Dec. 13 that said federal scientists are “frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump.”…
In his experience, the “most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015 (hereafter referred to as the Karl study or K15), purporting to show no ‘hiatus’ in global warming in the 2000s.”…
NOAA did not return immediately Sunday a request for comment. The Daily Mail said that Mr. Karl “admitted the data had not been archived when the paper was published” but denied trying to influence the climate summit…
The American Geophysical Union issued a statement saying it was “very closely monitoring the situation, have considered the possible implications, and will be sharing any new information or response by AGU with you here.”
“I also want you to know that, while climate science knowledge is evolving, these reports do not change our fundamental understanding of climate change,” said AGU president Eric Davidson.
Michael E. Mann, the “hockey stick” theory founder and Penn State climatologist, dismissed the Bates charges on Twitter as the “latest denialist smear against #NOAA scientists.”
Another prominent climate scientist, the University of Colorado’s Roger A. Pielke Sr., said Mr. Bates‘ experience was “consistent with my experiences” with Mr. Karl on the Climate Change Science Program in 2005.
“What John Bates has done is to expose this culture based not on robust science, but on promoting an agenda,” Mr. Pielke said in a comment on Climate Etc. “Regardless of one’s views on policies, the scientific method should not be hijacked as they have done.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/5/climate-change-whistleblower-alleges-noaa-manipula/
30
I often wonder why people pay any attention to anything Berkley Earth says.
The only link to Berkley Uni is that Richard Muller, AGW scammer and the owners dad, works there.
They are a non-profit, run by a rabid AGW activist, Elizabeth Muller
IN 2013 they had income of half a million dollars,.. where from , I wonder !!
http://www.nonprofitfacts.com/CA/Berkeley-Earth-Inc.html
My thoughts are that they are PAID to try to fudge/create a data set that supports NOAA/GISS and the AGW scam.
62
Every time criticism of NOAA occurs anywhere on the web, the defence is always BEST comes to the same conclusion.
You could be right. I do remember Watts provided a lot of his own research into the BEST project only to be betrayed, though I can’t remember what the details were. He was very upset about that I remember.
50
According to your link, Andy:
Elizabeth Muller is the only employer as well as the only employee . . and taking a wage of $163,500 from the grant of $485,000 in 2013.
It must be lonely in her office . . but it’s on par with similar positions around the world. I’m thinking of Tim Flannery, for instance.
31
Does Donald Trump know all this stuff?
40
He even manages without a teleprompter.
His predecessor could not.
70
He is just competent, in my view (I have very high standards). All the others arrayed against him are incompetent–obsolete, in fact, if the voters know what’s good for them.
82
writer Gallucci previously worked for InsideClimate News:
5 Feb: Mashable: Maria Gallucci: No, U.S. climate scientists didn’t trick the world into adopting the Paris deal
The climate-denial camp has new ammunition: A widely refuted Daily Mail article that claims top U.S. climate scientists exaggerated their data for a 2015 study to “dupe” world leaders into adopting the Paris Climate Agreement…
Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the nonprofit organization Berkeley Earth, said Rose’s story is “so wrong, it’s hard to know where to start.”…
TWEET: Gavin Schmidt: Hilarious screw up by @DavidRoseUK and #FailOnSunday
1st picture is ‘evidence’ of misconduct, 2nd shows diff when baselines are correct…
Meanwhile, right-wing websites like Breitbart News and Daily Caller shared the U.K. article to cast further doubt on the mainstream scientific consensus that global warming is happening, and that human activity is largely to blame…
Despite its THIN evidence, the Daily Mail story may find a friendly audience in the Trump administration, which views mainstream climate science with suspicion, if not outright denial…
TWEET: 6 Feb: Lamar Smith: NOAA sr officials played fast & loose w/data in order 2 meet politically predetermined conclusion on climate change (LINK)
Victor Venema, a German scientist with the World Meteorological Organization, explained in his own blog post how Rose apparently misconstrued the climate data to support evidence of a pause.
Irish climate scientist Peter Thorne, who worked on the landmark 2015 study, also penned a rebuttal to the newspaper article, noting that at least seven key aspects of the story are a “misrepresentation of the processes that actually occurred.”
He added that the accusations “do not square one iota with the robust integrity I see in the work and discussions that I have been involved in with them [NOAA] for over a decade.”…
VIDEO BONUS: 2016 was earth’s warmest year on record, continuing a three-year streak
http://mashable.com/2017/02/05/noaa-global-warming-hiatus-story/#VYwSBPwIxsqu
5 Feb: Daily Mail: THE MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Climate debate needs cold facts and cool heads
Think what you like about the great Climate Change controversy, it will have a powerful effect on you. Many are baffled by complex arguments about the rate and nature of global warming, and its cause.
But the current consensus is having a giant influence on governments and industry, and on all our pockets. Vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are being spent on measures to reduce CO2 emissions.
Much of this tax is raised by levies which dramatically increase industrial and domestic fuel bills. Much of it is spent on subsidising alternative and renewable sources of energy – which are now big businesses in their own right
Every few years, politicians get together at great international conferences and intensify this effort. They tend to brush aside dissent when they do so, arguing that the matter is both decided and extremely urgent. In that case it is surely their duty to be scrupulous and demanding about the figures on which they base these actions. But, as The Mail on Sunday reveals today, there are serious doubts about recent research – research which was used to thrust aside scepticism about the rate of warming, and so to intensify costly efforts to combat it.
A distinguished climate scientist, Dr John Bates, has gone public with claims that a 2015 document was based upon unverified and misleading data…
Thanks to this revelation, much of the urgent rhetoric spouted by politicians since 2015 now looks threadbare. And President Donald Trump will find it easier than before to dismiss the Climate Change agenda completely. If he does, those who rushed to publicise these flawed data have only themselves to blame.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4192502/THE-MAIL-SUNDAY-COMMENT-Climate-needs-cold-fact.html
50
The Gavin Schmidt citing should tell the world that HE too is criminally biased, and not a real scientist at all, in refusing to accept the reality of what is now becoming obvious to even the decades-long climate-alarmism-compliant media.
123
NYT, WaPo, BBC still refusing to report the story, it would seem.
no surprises in the following attack:
5 Feb: Guardian: John Abraham: Mail on Sunday launches the first salvo in the latest war against climate scientists
David Rose penned an attack described by expert as “so wrong it’s hard to know where to start”
In this new political era, climate scientists and their science are under attack. The attack is from multiple fronts, from threats to pull funding of the important instruments they use to measure climate change, to slashing their salaries and jobs. But there is a real fear of renewed personal attacks, and it appears those fears are now being realized. What the attackers do is identify and isolate scientists – a process termed the “Serengeti Strategy” by well-known and respected scientist Michael Mann who suffered these types of attacks for years…
VIDEO: Michael Mann explains the Serengeti Strategy…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/feb/05/mail-on-sunday-launches-the-first-salvo-in-the-latest-war-against-climate-scientists
50
They will all go down in history as criminally complicit, as will the entire Insane Left under Obama (who was no more presidential than they are scientific).
83
5 Feb: Icarus-maynooth blog: Peter Thorne: On the Mail on Sunday article on Karl et al., 2015
(This is the blog of the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units hosted by the Department of Geography at Maynooth University)
The ‘whistle blower’ is John Bates who was not involved in any aspect of the work. NOAA’s process is very stove-piped such that beyond seminars there is little dissemination of information across groups. John Bates never participated in any of the numerous technical meetings on the land or marine data I have participated in at NOAA NCEI either in person or remotely. This shows in his reputed (I am taking the journalist at their word that these are directly attributable quotes) mis-representation of the processes that actually occured. In some cases these mis-representations are publically verifiable.
I will go through a small selection of these in the order they appear in the piece:…
SIX COMMENTS INCL 3 BY PETER THORNE –
Unknown said…
THank you for the detailed explanation that debunks some of the inevitable spin from the mail, I had a couple of questions if I may,
In regards to point 2, is it correct to say that the new data will show cooler temperatures than that used in the 2015 paper? If so, is it significantly cooler?
On another note, the Mail article talks of an error in which there was a “failure to archive and make available fully documented data” meaning that the results of the influential 2015 paper cannot be independently validated.
Is there any truth to that?
PeterThorne said…
To anon:
In regard to point 2 it will not be entirely clear what the change in ERSSTv5 vs. ERSSTv4 is until a final version appears. In the version submitted to the journal the change is minor yielding a slight reduction in the rate of recent warming of SSTs. But peer review, internal process review and thorough testing must take its course. And during this time changes may be suggested that improve and change the product. It would never be wise to assume that a submitted manuscript will match the final product.
For Karl et al., 2015 the source code and data for much, if not all, of the process is available. As noted in my post I was not involved in that paper itself. But the bits I was involved in I would disagree with the assertion in the Mail on Sunday…READ ON
http://icarus-maynooth.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/on-mail-on-sunday-article-on-karl-et-al.html
20
5 Feb: Grantham Institute/LSE: Bob Ward: More fake news in ‘The Mail on Sunday’
The article states: “None of the data on which the paper was based was properly ‘archived’ – a mandatory requirement meant to ensure that raw data and the software used to process it is accessible to other scientists, so they can verify NOAA results”.
But the article fails to admit that the paper by Dr Karl and co-authors has already been subjected to extensive scrutiny by other researchers since it was published in June 2015…
David Rose and the editors of ‘The Mail on Sunday’ have a track record of unreliable reporting on climate change and of misrepresenting the science…SMEAR SMEAR SMEAR
The new article by Mr Rose demonstrates that ‘The Mail on Sunday’ is still using fake news to mislead the public and policy-makers about the scientific evidence for climate change.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/more-fake-news-in-the-mail-on-sunday/
20
Grantham Institute……….nothing but a group of leftist VERMIN!
11
A bit off topic but highly relevant to the modus operandi of the elitist climate alarmist scientists.
As a farmer I spent about half a century trying to grow plants that I could sell the seed and products of those plants to consumers and so make a living of sorts.
During my time farming I got mixed up in agricultural science for obvious reasons and spent some time associating with agricultural scientists and plant breeders, that handful of un-noticed, unsung, almost completely unrecognised and totally ignored by the media and society, low public profile guys and now quite a number of gals in nearly every nation who are central to the world being able to feed its billions in the decades ahead by breeding crop varieties that will both give better yields off the same acreages, be ever more resistant to disease of every type and give better qualities for human and animal consumption.
And be adapted to the ever changing climatic conditions that will exist a dozen or 15 years ahead when their initial crosses for new varieties will become a commercial, in farmer’s fields, crop variety.
To try and anticipate just what sort of climatic conditions the plant breeders, plant geneticists, plant chemists and plant pathologists must try to plan for in the dozen or more years ahead when a few of their thousands of crosses finally become commercially field viable, they use Climate Models from the most prestigious climate research outfits to try and anticipate the climatic conditions the crops will face as they become potential commercial propositions in those couple of decades ahead.
Now as all of Jo’s regular denizens know, climate modellers and climate activists [ “activist” is merely a polite term for an utterly bigoted fanatic who come hell or high water is going to force “its” [ PC description ] own personal cult like belief onto everybody else and the entire society and who intends to destroy everybody who does not hold to that “activist’s” particular and highly specific cultist ideology ] will quote all sorts of very definite numbers without any error bars or admissions of possible deviations or faults in the modelling programs.
On the basis of those very definite numbers from the models we have got the total debacle of unreliable, inefficient, crippling expensive renewable energy that is costing Australian consumers some three billion dollars without ANY verifiable and / or measurable differences to the climate to be seen or measured and that for over two decades past.
And this whilst most of the rest of the world gets on with making energy as cheap and reliable and readily available and the hell with any climate. They will deal with that if and when any supposed problem appears if ever.
We have a so called “colander” type international agreement that if implemented would cripple civilisation but which Australian politicians in their total collective and utter ignorance talk about implementing .
We have all sorts of horror stories of metres high sea level rises, no evidence of which are to be seen after two decades of predictions arising from climate models and climate modellers.
We have repeated ad nauseum predictions of disappearing ice caps. predictions which Nature has seen fit to ignore in totality and regularly gives the two fingered salute to.
We have repeated predictions of rapidly increasing temperatures whereas the latest data says the world has cooled by a good fraction of a degree in the last few months.
We have repeated predictions of massive crop failures due to the predicted but so far non existent and still not found terrible heat from global warming. And all the while global crop yields continue to increase despite climate modellers predictions.
We have politicians and scientists and experts who would’nt know what a Climate was even if they froze to death in one, all rushing around and imposing draconian solutions onto the populace to solve a non existent problem based on something that has no proven evidence to say it even existed except in some very dubious climate models of indeterminate origin, no backups, no verification, no validation and even less ability to tell what time of the day it was, highly secretive, in a bubble and siloed and botched up to keep it from other non climate scientist’s examination.
And etc and etc, all delivered as predictions with very precise numbers and an absolute certified accuracy of the prediction by the modellers and activists and renewable energy scammers and climate science troughers and ignorant in the extreme politicians and leftard media reporters with their favorite a far left agenda they are promoting.
—————-
So back to those plant breeders and a plant breeder’s, agricultural scientist’s look at the REAL results from climate modelling in the real world that plant breeders and plant scientists inhabit, using some of the most recent climate models [ 2013 ] and the plant breeders and plant scientist’s opinions and experiences in evaluating those late release climate models for use in making predictions on the type and range of climatic conditions the newest varieties of plants being bred will face when they become field viable a decade and a half ahead.
Abstract; Implications of regional improvement in global climate models for agricultural impact research.
[ CGIAR is a highly reputable part of global agricultural research ]
For the more public commentary by the authors of this study on the suitability of climate models in future climate predictions that will be relevant to agricultural research and plant breeding.
Young scientists may retire before global climate change models improve
[ more ]
And this folks is what all the renewable energy and emmission reductions and devastating rises in global temperatures and devastating sea level rises and of course, the the huge and industry and society crippling increases in energy costs and etc and etc are all based solely and entirely on the “claimed” and very accurate and specific results from those all conquering unchallengeable climate models and their high priest shamans, the climate modellers.
May they rot in hell for all the lies and distortions and hate and strife and hardship and fear and destruction of trust they have generated with their utterly useless and and no doubt as with Jo’s headline post, totally and deliberately duplicitous models.
And all for what?
183
Terrific comment Rom, plant breeders versus hockey stick
makers … Norman Borlaug, whose high yielding crop varieties
helped avert mass famine versus Michael Mann, whose tipping
point scenarios ( that didn’t match reality) contributed to
fear and guilt renewable energy policies that make countries
less productive and more vulnerable to famine.
90
Good to know that, globally, bumper crops are being harvested year on year. A much used word on sites covering agriculture is ” due to benign weather”
Agriculture and climate go hand in hand, agriculture is the one thing the alarmists cannot fake and the one thing that will be a thorn in their side.
41
You have an amazing complaint/rant but lacks some connection with scientific reality. I haven’t read all your claims, but things like this don’t strike confidence “the latest data says the world has cooled by a good fraction of a degree in the last few months.” That’s called local seasonal weather not climate.
“We have repeated ad nauseum predictions of disappearing ice caps”
If you read, you’ll see those predictions are not for this decade or the next.
“We have all sorts of horror stories of metres high sea level rises”
You may want to look at this article. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/05/20/10-things-you-should-know-about-sea-level-rise-and-how-bad-it-could-be/?utm_term=.52101a005061 It explains just how much can be the rises but it’s hard to know what fraction of that will happen when. We have enough ice to raise oceans 230 feet if it all melted at once. Besides that we get many more feet if the oceans warm a degree through and through (as opposed to primarily on surface). You may know that the heat used to melt ice cannot cause temperatures to climb (it’s one or the other). Antarctica ice is keeping us stable. As long as it snows there and almost all of the ice stays there, we are ok.
My guess is that unless there is a major event like ice flows from Antarctica into ocean in large quantities, we are unlikely to see more than a foot or a few in the next few decades. The IPCC mean value I think is much less than that. The movies you see with NY under water etc may nor may not happen in part but probably centuries into the future if we don’t change course. [We will.] Nature can be slow though, so when we change course, we may not change the direction of nature for decades more.
00
Always amusing to read about the temp data. Even indoors and controlled conditions with high precision instruments it is hard to get accuracy to within 1C degree accuracy-
“Consider what you are trying to measure the temperature of. An example that seems simple at first is measuring room temperature to 1°C accuracy. The problem here is that room temperature is not one temperature but many. ( mostly estimated in Africa)
Figure 1 shows sensors at three different heights record the temperatures in one of Pico Technology’s storerooms. The sensor readings differ by at least 1°C so clearly, no matter how accurate the individual sensors, we will never be able to measure room temperature to 1°C accuracy.”
With NOAA able to estimate to tenths of a degree why don’t Picotech sub contract to them?
https://www.picotech.com/library/application-note/improving-the-accuracy-of-temperature-measurements
91
you have to laugh-
cont..
“Conclusion
High precision temperature measurement is possible through the use of well-specified and suitably calibrated sensors and instrumentation. However, the accuracy of these measurements will be meaningless unless the equipment and sensors are used correctly”
NOAA get to to tenths of a degree accuracy in Africa when it is just estimated. PICO need to contact NOAA immediately.
102
I suspect the “climate scientists” glibly gloss over the problems with their anomaly measurements, recursive corrections of the data records, and their lack of adequate data and meta data backups. There are three specific and related issues that must be dealt with explicitly and carefully or their computations are nothing but science fiction and fantasy.
1. Accuracy: A measure of how close to the real world value is the measurement. The problem with this measurement is that you must know what the true real world value actually is. As such, it cannot be measured by the same device who’s accuracy is being determined.
2. Precision: A measure of how clustered repeated measures of the same thing happens to be. This measure uses the device who’s precision is being determined. The catch is that the thing measured must be exactly the same for each measure going into the precision calculation. Another device must be used to assure the consistency of the thing measured.
3. Resolution: A measure of the least change in the thing measured that will cause a detectable change in the measurement reading. The catch is that the resolution at one level may be different from the resolution at a different level. This cannot be found by use of the device who’s resolution is being determined. Hence another device must be used to determine the accuracy of each measurement.
The really big catch is that ALL measurements suffer from the above 3 catches. So we have an infinitely recursive problem to determine Accuracy, Precision, and Resolution for each tool used to calibrate the Accuracy, Precision, and Resolution of a given device.
The net of all of this is that you may be able to determine resolution, precision, and accuracy of a device with each determination having a greater error bar than the preceding determination. This alone is likely to make a temperature reading with an error bar greater than the stated 0.1 degree accuracy.
All of this is a serious issue in a well controlled laboratory environment. Apply that to the uncontrolled environment of randomly scattered weather stations and you are lucky to see a provable several degree accuracy. Add to that the hit or miss maintenance of the weather stations, lack of a continuous record of meta data including repeated correction of the past data record, the claimed 0.1 degree accuracy is not even a good fantasy.
It give a local example. I have two ambient digital output temperature measuring devices about two feet from me. They are separated by approximately an inch. One reads 74.5 F and the other reads 73.6 F. They both cannot be right but they both can be wrong.
What is the temperature of my room? All I know for sure, it is somewhere between approximately 212 F and 32 F because my local temperature standard, a cup of coffee, is neither frozen nor boiling. The room feels a bit on the cool side to me.
113
And here Lionell you are at the core of the issue; just what is it that is being measured.
A couple of weeks ago I posted some “temperature” values obtained from my backyard using a digital “handgun”.
The measurements of different surfaces varied widely.
Measuring the world’s temperature is fraught with the same types of problem.
For any “expert” to claim that global “temperature” can be measured to an accuracy of +/- 0.1 degrees just proves the contention many of us support:
This is not science.
KK
30
RE: “There are three specific and related issues that must be dealt with explicitly and carefully or their computations are nothing but science fiction and fantasy.”
I think there are many more than that.
4. Infilling missing data.
5. Assumptions when creating temperatures of regions between data points.
6. Boundary conditions (or lack thereof), mountain ranges, water bodies, forests, prevailing winds, trapped valleys, ect.
7. Oceans.
8. What meaning an average temperature for a continent means anyway?
40
Good points Greg and the precursor to all of them is the accuracy or relevance of the temperature measurement to produce the “data”.
This aspect has only recently been raised but is of fundamental importance and it seems is the greatest basic point of weakness in the global warming myth.
As Lionell says, it is hard enough to get accurate results for temperature measurement in the controlled conditions of a laboratory; what sort of scientist is able to claim to be able to measure atmospheric temperatures to +/- 0.1C.
The answer would be, one that is not a “scientist”.
They most likely have no clue what they are measuring and Will points to some of the possibilities there.
My own brief backyard experiment with a digital “handgun” shows quite clearly that the “temperature” of my backyard depends on what surface is measured.
See here :
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/01/what-they-dont-say-about-the-hottest-ever-year-20-year-warming-trend-is-one-third-of-what-models-predicted/#comment-1882300
My main gripe with satellite records is not with those “temperatures” as such. The problem for me is that some “scientists” seem to think you can mesh these new results with old data obtained from a totally different process.
There is absolutely no equivalence in the data and the two sets are as alike as chalk and cheese.
They have a point of weakness; what is being measured; would another data gatherer (blind) measuring the same thing get the same results?
KK
30
factor in that your don’t even have any temp stations to actually measure-
WMO-
“Because the data with respect to in-situ surface
air temperature across Africa is sparse, a oneyear regional assessment for Africa could not be based on any of the three standard global
surface air temperature data sets from NOAANCDC, NASA-GISS or HadCRUT4 Instead, the combination of the Global Historical Climatology Network and the Climate Anomaly Monitoring System (CAMS GHCN) by NOAA’s Earth System
Research Laboratory was used to estimate surface air temperature patterns”
20
Hi Richard
Your “room analogy” is a very important issue that we must make more of. See comments following that have been triggered by that post.
🙂 KK
20
Just some room temp experiments put online mimicking Pico would be a good start, intercut with maps of the world illustrating where there are no temp stations and it is all
estimated.
20
Since the data does not exist, the paper is worthless. However that was not the purpose. The purpose was to get the meme out in front of the conference, and then to let it disappear. So it did serve its purpose.
However, anyone claiming it is “science” is deluding themselves. It is not science. It is pure politics.
160
Phil,
Surface temperature data doesn’t support the AGW conjecture anyway,because the the postulated CO2 effect claims are in the ATMOSPHERE arena. The Satellite data doesn’t show the postulated “hot spot” at all, also the per decade warming rate is only about 1/3 of the projected rate,based on the AGW conjecture.
The world warms up,the rate of energy leaving the planet increases,more than TWICE the postulated warm forcing CO2 effect. CO2 effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 volume effect on temperature,falls within the statistical noise of temperature data. That is why you can’t see any visible CO2 warming effect by Satellite data.
From The Inconvenient Skeptic website:
LINK
Sun,wind and Clouds,determines the warming/cooling rate of the Ocean waters. CO2 has no measurable effect on the water temperature,since it is an Atmosphere gas,that can’t transfer measurable energy into the water.
Satellite data killed the AGW conjecture long ago.
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Anybody love the fake David Rose graph. Anybody read the verification of the updated SST data. Oh sorry, not for the gullible any belief in fact check
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To Sillyfilly,
Another deflecting comment from you, a noted alarmist cultist. Meanwhile you ignore the revelations made by Dr. Bates on the K15 paper,which was long shown to be junk a year ago.
Nick Stokes is making a big deal about it at WUWT,making himself look foolish,especially when Bill Illis,asked him a question,that Nick ignores answering,even when I told him about it at Curry’s blog yesterday.
This is what Bill wrote:
LINK
Why don’t you address what the WHISTLE BLOWER says,instead of the boring deflection attempt?
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pbweather,also takes Stokes to task when he wrote this:
LINK
Nick replies that he doesn’t deceive,with FOUR misleading charts,but pbweather replies again with this:
LINK
Nick stops answering,because he got exposed as a being deceptive.
Nick Stokes is being misleading and dishonest here. He spends all his time trying to beat up a David Rose chart, but completely ignores what the Whistle blower claims.
It is clear that warmist lemmings like you and Nick (who should know better) try hard to flog David,ignore the revelations made by Dr. Bates.
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Rose had to fake it because Bates has nothing, he didn’t even work on the updated SST data. So much for the integrity of the commentary.
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“he didn’t even work on the updated SST data”
Neither did ANY of the co-writers of the Karl paper…
… otherwise they would have the code and data.
OOPS.. Silly filly steps in her own horses**t, yet again.
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Jo, there is an article about this in The Times, reprinted in The Australian, titled “Politics and science are a toxic combination”. There is a very interesting comment about half way through;
Might be an idea to keep an eye on this.
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The Pause was made disappear,
Just in time, it now would appear,
To induce massive spending,
On the warming unending,
In Paris, through a climate of fear.
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Josh
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2017/2/6/climategate-20.html
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Had someone told me all the nonsense about the so-called dangerous man-made global warming forty years ago and what would come to pass in the scientific world, I’d have rolled around the floor laughing.
Exagerrated stories based on claimed fraction of a degree changes – and the clowns can’t even measure temperatures properly! We have the silly so-called 97% consensus – based on a rubbishy paper that shouldn’t have got anywhere near publication, the garbage about ‘30% increased acidification of the oceans’, failed computer projections and all the other drivel to which we are subjected daily by the brainless denizens of the mainstream media.
When will these second-class ‘scientists’ be pensioned off and the whole sorry tale be relegated to history, I wonder?
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Not quite O/T
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/the-workers-of-the-world-have-picked-their-leadership-and-it-isnt-you/
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Interesting diatribe on how the left have lost the battle on climate change and the Western world is moving more to the right of politics. It fits in with what’s happening here with Turnbull’s eventual demise for moving the so called Liberal party more to the left, which in time will be recognised as the biggest blunder a Liberal leader has ever done. As a result the LNP is bleeding voters to the real conservative and right of centre minor parties. The irony though is the ALP+Greens could still win the next election by default, which will be catastrophic for Australia. Turnbull has to go and the LNP has to do a reset on a number of issues, and more to the point actually do things rather than just talk about them on TV shows. Tiem for talking is over – we had enough of the same old issues endlessly being discussed for years. Trump has implemented certain things in a matter of days what our government would take years if not decades to do.
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The Left still control the institutions. Acadème and 4th Estate have the means and gravitas – in the eyes of many that it is difficult to get traction.Trump is going t need all the executive authority he can. The masses are ignorant and brainwashed.
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‘The masses are ignorant and brainwashed.’
No doubt about it, but Trump will overturn catastrophism theory by telling the Klimatariat its only the sun stoopids.
The stand up comics will have a field day, a hoot, the masses will laugh and then begin to question the whole concept of AGW.
From there its only a random walk to victory.
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‘…in time will be recognised as the biggest blunder a Liberal leader has ever done.’
Talcum and the push thought it was intelligent design, history won’t be kind to them.
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BruceC comment #25 says Australian/Times piece includes: “Science magazine is considering retracting the paper.”
note the following ***:
6 Feb: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: NOAA To ‘Review’ Allegations That Scientists Manipulated Global Warming Research
“NOAA takes seriously any allegation that its internal processes have not been followed and will review the matter appropriately,” a NOAA spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation in response to Bates’ accusations
The NOAA spokesman gave no further details on what actions the agency could take.
“NOAA is charged with providing peer-reviewed data to the American public and stands behind its world-class scientists,” the spokesman said…
***Jeremy Berg, editor-in-chief of the journal Science, stood behind the Karl study, which they published in June 2015. Berg said Karl study data “were deposited and are readily accessible according to our policy.”
“Science stands behind its handling of the paper by Karl et al., which underwent particularly rigorous peer review,” Berg said in an emailed statement…
But not everyone was convinced by the Karl study’s defenders…
“It is not good enough to say that one believes the researchers would probably have released their computer code if they were asked for it, or to say the data was archived because it was available on an ftp site, or that procedures put in place were bypassed because they were inconvenient,” wrote Dr. David Whitehouse, science editor at the Global Warming Policy Forum…
“This latest development is one of scientific conduct and integrity,” Whitehouse wrote in a blog post (LINK). “The global temperature datasets are among the most important datasets in the world. Billions of pounds rest on them.”
http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/06/noaa-to-review-allegations-that-scientists-manipulated-global-warming-research/
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comment with Daily Caller link re the NOAA “review” has gone into moderation:
6 Feb: Washington Times: Valerie Richardson: NOAA agrees to review scientist’s claim that data manipulated to discredit warming ‘pause’
Agency ‘stands behind its world-class scientists’ as debate rages over 2015 ‘pausebuster’ study
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday that it would review a whistleblower’s allegations that the agency manipulated climate data in order to eliminate the global warming “pause” for political reasons…
“NOAA is charged with providing peer-reviewed data to the American public and stands behind its world-class scientists,” a NOAA spokesman said in an email. “NOAA takes seriously any allegation that its internal processes have not been followed and will review the matter appropriately.”…
Climate scientist Peter Thorne, who has done work for NOAA, argued that Mr. Bates was “not involved in any aspect of the work.”…
Mr. Bates responded that Mr. Thorne was not a federal employee and therefore was unable to participate in government-only meetings, “and certainly never attended any federal meetings where end-to-end processing was continuously discussed.”…
Meanwhile, Ms. Currysaid she hoped “policies can be put in place to keep this from ever happening again.”
“Under the Obama administration, I suspect that it would have been very difficult for this story to get any traction,” she said. “Under the Trump administration, I have every confidence that this will be investigated ***(but still not sure how the MSM will react).”
FROM COMMENTS:
NOAA investigating NOAA – what could go wrong?…
They will be NOAAccount!…
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/6/noaa-agrees-review-claim-data-manipulation-climate/
6 Feb: Scientific American: House Science Chairman Sees Liberal Cover-Up on Warming Pause
Lamar Smith says he has new evidence that a government study discrediting a purported pause in global warming was politically motivated, but independent research supports the findings
By Scott Waldman, E&E News
Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who receives significant donations from the energy industry, accused federal scientists again yesterday of politically motivated fraud. He said Bates’ comments were proof that the study was rigged.
He also said Bates has exposed “the previous administration’s efforts to push their costly climate agenda at the expense of scientific integrity.”…
Tomorrow, Smith is scheduled to hold a hearing promoting Republican efforts to make EPA “great again.” Critics argue it’s intended to weaken scientific research that’s used to justify environmental regulations
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News.
READ THIS NEXT
No Pause in Global Warming by Mark Fischetti Jan 4, 2017
The Pause in Global Warming is Finally Explained by Mark Fischetti, Feb 6, 2015
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/house-science-chairman-sees-liberal-cover-up-on-warming-pause/
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2 comments re NOAA agreeing to review the allegations etc have gone into moderation.
lol. money & politics, not science, influenced Paris deal! inconvenient truths from Ed King/Climate Home:
6 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Contested NOAA paper had no influence on Paris climate deal
Envoys from US, EU, Russia and South Africa reject claims that one piece of research in June 2015 shaped flagship UN climate pact
There are signs Smith and other US lawmakers will use the story to bolster their calls for NOAA to be defunded and the US to pull out of its international climate commitments…
Climate Home contacted 10 envoys and ministers involved in the Paris climate summit. Not one said this report made an iota of difference to its result.
“No single paper had a significant role in shaping the outcome of the conference,” Norway’s climate and environment minister Vidar Helgesen told this website.
***“What mattered in Paris was the strong message from business and investors that we need to take climate risk seriously.”…
Oleg Shamanov, Russia’s top climate negotiator, told Climate Home the only “authoritative source” of climate science was the IPCC’s fifth assessment report (AR5).
“It’s my firm belief that it was ***politics, not science, that really influenced negotiations,” he said in an email…
Also missing from the Mail’s report is acknowledgement that many climate scientists – and journalists – forensically questioned the study on its release in June 2015.
It received wide coverage: ***Reuters, the New York Times and BBC were among those who covered its release and claims that the so-called hiatus in global warming had been exaggerated…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/02/06/contested-noaa-paper-had-no-influence-on-paris-climate-deal/
this story is moving at a rapid pace, yet ***Reuters, the New York Times and BBC (WaPo, theirABC, US networks, etc) have not even mentioned the allegations yet! also no AP or Reuters report founds to date.)
US govt agency manipulated data to exaggerate climate change – whistleblower
RT – 16 minutes ago
A recently-retired top scientist from the America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has accused his superiors of fudging data to hide a slowdown in the rise of global temperatures ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in 2015…
Do not buy the House Science Committee’s claim that scientists faked data until you read this
Popular Science – 59 minutes ago
The piece, which quotes John Bates—a scientist who NOAA once employed—
6 Feb: Reason blog: Ronald Bailey: Climate Scientists Manipulated Temperature Data to Fool Politicians and Public, Claims ‘Whistleblower’
Another update on the ‘settled science’ of climate change
Bates’ charges about data manipulation are serious and must be properly investigated (although how to do that dispassionately and objectively in the politicized field of climate science is not at all clear).
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Here in America the “IRS” is the tax collection agency and, hopefully following the Law, grants tax-exempt status to “not for profit” organizations. The IRS refused to approve applications from any who opposed Obama.
The head of the Department that was responsible for such decisions “suffered’ a total loss of her e-mails. Hillary Clinton had similar problems, causing her underlings to avoid prosecution.
Trump may really be willing to use his full power to dismiss these “conspirators”. To be fair we cannot know with certainty exactly what they did but losing data and code is the best way to hide things. If this was an honest error most thoughtful Americans will still believe they have faked things to help Obama.
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With four authors of the one paper and not a single copy among them. There is no chance that this was an accident. And as many have already stated; a dead computer doesn’t mean the data is unrecoverable.
30
Remember Greg that Hillary used special “wiping” software to wipe hard drives and hammers to destroy memory devices. After dozens of hammer blows or minutes of blowtorch exposure hard drives are hard to read.
But we agree that there is no acceptable explanation for losing data and code. It HAD to be on a lot of devices as well as on paper. It would require dozens of accidents.
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..Actually, the best way to wipe a hard drive is with a very strong Electrostatic current.. When I was night supervisor of a factory that made every type of plastic pharmaceutical container (Tums, Tylenol..etc..).. In the clean room, if you went near the Electrostatic Tunnel, (used to remove impurities created during manufacturing) with a cell phone or any electronic device, Cell phones and calculators got destroyed..Laptops simply wiped…I learned the hard way..sigh !
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[…] quoted another article on this matter: In an exclusive interview, Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas […]
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..NOAA’s dishonesty finally hits the main stream media !!
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/02/07/federal-scientist-cooked-climate-change-books-ahead-obama-presentation-whistle-blower-charges.html
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Dr John Bates in his own words:
“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” he told reporter Scott Waldman. And Bates told ScienceInsider that he is wary of his critique becoming a talking point for those skeptical of human-caused climate change. But it was important for this conversation about data integrity to happen, he says.
(from ScienceInsider http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/how-culture-clash-noaa-led-flap-over-high-profile-warming-pause-study)
[What is your point Jessie? Skeptics have been going on and on about data integrity!]ED
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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/02/serving-up-a-noaa-thing-burger/
You can’t handle the truth.
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Just tried to make a point at the Guardian in response to Dana’s article at their site regarding John Bates.
WilliamSluman 12m ago
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1
John Bates letter, published at Judith Curry’s Climate etc., includes the following paragraph. This would seem to indicate he had some concerns about how data was being used.
A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center
“A NOAA NCEI supervisor remarked how it was eye-opening to watch Karl work the co-authors, mostly subtly but sometimes not, pushing choices to emphasize warming. Gradually, in the months after K15 came out, the evidence kept mounting that Tom Karl constantly had his ‘thumb on the scale’—in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets—in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy”.
WilliamSluman 8m ago
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/feb/09/whistleblower-i-knew-people-would-misuse-this-they-did-to-attack-climate-science
Hmmmmm…….maybe not exactly climategate II then??
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roflmao.. Gruniad??? Are you being serious or did you forget the /sarc tage
If they are defending it, you can bet there is fire. They are the world leaders in Fake News.
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