Pielke Senior: NASA GISS Inaccurate Press Release On The Surface Temperature Trend Data

Looks like Jim Hansen got caught with his fingers in the cookie jar…
Again…

NASA GISS doesn’t Mannipulate data they say, but they refuse to cooperate with releasing the un Mannipulated data. Hansen claims to have his nose above FOIA requests.
Hansen’s stubbornness will backfire.

We’ll see who’s gullible when racketeering charges start.

Jim Hansen and the rest of the hockey team do not need to address unresolved conflicts with other papers as long as they hold the aura of “the authority”. Acting as the singular authority all other views can be ignored as unsupported, unproven, or just tainted by big oil.
As soon as the hockey team is shown to be just one more viewpoint tainted by their own funding sources and ethical problems the appeal to authority argument will no longer work.
Hmmm that last sentence should begin with “Now that” instead of “As soon as”.

Mr. Hansens paper show cute little graphs run on the same heavliy modified and cherry-picked GISS datasets, as well as the equally derived HadCRUT.
Rural datasets, on the other hand, do not show the ghastly warming. Anomaly maps might be good for analysis, but they are not the reality. They are used by Hansen and others to hide the fact that the modified temperature set is not the observed temperature set.
It is true that there has been some warming, but NOT the high temps. What they don’t want you to know is that the warming was due to increased nighttime temps. I say was, because that is coming to a screeching halt.
Also, Mr. Hansen says
“For example, if it is an unusually cold winter in New York, it is probably unusually cold in Philadelphia too. This fact suggests that it may be better to assign a temperature anomaly based on the nearest stations for a gridbox that contains no observing stations, rather than excluding that gridbox from the global analysis. ”
Really? I’m supposed to believe that in order to get a better picture, I should run Hubble Space Telescope equipped with a mask to let in a cone of light the size of a coffee can lid.
No wonder the picture they paint is so darned hazy. At the rate of data they are considering, it will take 500 years to get the next 100 years worth of data points.

On a related note, I’ve found where the UAH and RSS raw data is stored. It’s at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the “Data Pool” section of this page:
http://nsidc.org/data/amsre/order_data.html
I’ve not yet come across any UAH or RSS source code that processes this raw data. However, there is some general purpose source code for working with this data here:
http://nsidc.org/data/amsre/tools.html
The raw data has the following noteworthy properties:
*) It’s huge. I’d estimate a single day of temperatures will be about 2.5 gigabytes of data.
*) It mixes binary and text data in a single file. The text data is in hierarchical forma, but it’s not XM, JSON, or any other standard format. It uses custom tags to define the hierarchy.
*) It includes all levels of the atmosphere. Usually, you’ll just want the troposphere, so you’ll have to extract that information out manually.
For more information on this data and how it’s collected, see the WUWT post by Dr. Spencer, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/12/how-the-uah-global-temperatures-are-produced/#more-15191

P.S.
In regards to the raw UAH/RSS data, I forgot to mention you’ll want the AE_L2A.2 brightness temperatures data.
http://n4eil01u.ecs.nasa.gov:22000/WebAccess/drill?attrib=esdt&esdt=AE_L2A.2&group=AMSA

magicjava (11:38:38) :
Data sold separately. Another flagrant abuse of public money funded research.
We pay $billions in taxes for them to do the gathering, they walk all over it, and we’re supposed to pay them exorbitant sums to have it emailed to us.
Would you pay big bucks to see a Hubble shot that was doctored in Photoshop to look like somebody tossed paint on the wall?
Of course you wouldn’t.
I’d be willing to bet that the $$$ they are charging for information already paid for with our tax money is getting diverted into other agendas or pockets.

Jerzy (11:12:18) :
What exactly are the “quality control checks” that NASA claims “are regularly performed on that data”?
When they get the temperature data to conform to their models, then they are assured of the quality of their data. And the incoming raw data has been so lousy for so long, requiring so much work to adjust it until it is of acceptable quality, it’s no wonder Hansen doesn’t want to release it!

“Isn’t the 1‐2°C on the low side for current estimates for the impact of CO2?”
There is Hansen’s projection and the IPCC projection.
Hansen’s orginal 1988 scenario’s ‘A’ have been discredited by observation.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/hansenlineartrend.jpg
In 2000, hansen changed his tune and started talking about soot from coal being the main problem.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20000829/
“However, new research suggests fossil fuel burning may not be as important in the mechanics of climate change as previously thought. ”
There is also a semantic game that gets played based on how much global warming since ‘when’. 2 degrees ‘C’ compared to 1850 or 2 degrees ‘C’ compared to now.

From The Sunday Times January 17, 2010
World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

Another piece of the puzzle is falling into place. The IPCC is now backpeddling on its claims about the Himalayan glaciers melting away by 2035.

“C’mon! Lazy press persons!!”
Just ask for:
1. The raw data for every station used, for the entire period of analysis
2. The algorithm (recipe) for:
i. Averaging across the earth’s surface (interpolation across earth’s surface)
ii. Averaging across time (interpolation over time)
3. Any further algorithms to *legitimately* adjust for:
i. Changes in weather station (e.g. location, instruments, etc.)
ii. Changes to surrounds (e.g. urban build up)
Make these available publicly, and watch real science go to work!

Harry (12:17:14) :

Hansen’s orginal 1988 scenario’s ‘A’ have been discredited by observation.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/hansenlineartrend.jpg

Interesting graph, now I understand that Hansen seems to me to be leading the pack of Alarmist doomsayers, but on that graph the Hansen C looks pretty good. What am I failing to understand here? Did he make a good projection? Add fudges after making it?

What was it that Wegman said?
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science

Peter Miller says:

As a geologist and a scientist, what I don’t understand is how changes in a trace gas (carbon dioxide), which has a concentration of less than one part in 2,500 in our atmosphere, can have more than a minuscule effect on our climate.
I accept the fact that carbon dioxide, like water vapour, is a ‘greenhouse gas’ when measured in percentage terms – but 0.038% – that’s like putting a magazine in the attic of your home and expecting the whole building to heat up.

I am not sure how you get your intuition. What is your intuition for what would happen to you if you were placed in a room with 0.038% of plutonium? As a scientist, you ought to understand that intuition is only a guide that works when it is informed by experience or hard scientific understanding.
There is two good reasons why CO2 has a disproportionate effect on the climate:
(1) 99% of the constituents of the atmosphere are transparent to IR radiation so the remaining ~1% have a disproportionate effect.
(2) The effect of concentration on radiative forcing is logarithmic over a fairly large range of concentrations, which again means that there can be a disproportionate effect.
Besides which, a change of ~6 C in the global temperature is a small change on an absolute temperature scale (about 2%) and yet this is enough to mean the difference between glacial and interglacial conditions.

We never see anything from Hansen et alia showing how to quantify the relationship between carbon dioxide levels and global temperature for the simple reason the science does not exist – what we do see instead is models which cannot even be manipulated enough to reflect what happened in the past.

Well, you don’t see what you don’t look at but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You don’t even have to go into the scientific literature to find a discussion of this by Hansen. You need only go to his Scientific American article from a few years back: http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh.html (see especially p. 2) More detail can be found in his peer-reviewed publications (e.g., http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2007/Hansen_etal_2.html ).

RE: Peter Miller (15:51:24) :
“As a geologist and a scientist, what I don’t understand is how changes in a trace gas (carbon dioxide), which has a concentration of less than one part in 2,500 in our atmosphere, can have more than a minuscule effect on our climate.”
Really? Most of the atmosphere (O2 and N2) is transparent to infrared radiation, so trace gases can have a large impact. We know that without the greenhouse effect caused by trace gases (yes, that includes water vapor) the earth would be about 33 degrees cooler. The reduction in outgoing infrared radiation at the wavelengths absorbed by CO2 has been measured by satellite.

In 1970, NASA launched the IRIS satellite that measured infrared spectra between 400 cm-1 to 1600 cm-1. In 1996, the Japanese Space Agency launched the IMG satellite which recorded similar observations. Both sets of data were compared to discern any changes in outgoing radiation over the 26 year period (Harries 2001). The resultant change in outgoing radiation was as follows: [see link for chart]
What they found was a drop in outgoing radiation at the wavelength bands that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) absorb energy. The change in outgoing radiation is consistent with theoretical expectations. Thus the paper found “direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect”.

I’m surprised nobody else answered your concerns.

rbateman (11:53:08) :
magicjava (11:38:38) :
Data sold separately.
——
I am not following your point with respect to what rbateman said or linked. Can you explain, please?
Somewhat related, quoted from the link: http://n4eil01u.ecs.nasa.gov:22000/WebAccess/drill?attrib=esdt&esdt=AE_L2A.2&group=AMSA
The AMSR-E/Aqua Daily L3 12.5 km Brightness Temperatures, Sea Ice Concentration, & Snow Depth Polar Grids (AE_SI12) product using the V11 algorithm contains an error in the Snow Depth on Sea Ice parameter in data prior to 05 October 2009. Users of this product should use caution when working with the Northern Hemisphere Snow Depth on Sea Ice parameter in data prior to 05 October 2009 until the data have been reprocessed with the V12 algorithm. We apologize for the inconvenience.
OMG! Grab the data quick before they fix it. Oh wait, they already fixed it 11 times, that’s why it has an error.

Jonni (16:58:44) :
rbateman (11:53:08) :
Data sold separately.
http://cdo.ncdc.noaa.gov/qclcd/QCLCD?prior=N
You want to play, you have to pay.
Your tax dollars at work.

RE: Smokey (17:49:06) :

deech56 (16:49:32),
Let’s do a little gedanken experiment:
Suppose there were no “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere. An incoming photon would presumably travel from the Sun straight down to the Earth, adding its quanta of energy and warming the planet.
Now let’s add CO2 [forget H2O vapor, it doesn’t change the experiment].
An incoming photon is absorbed by a CO2 molecule a couple of miles up.
But your though experiment does not represent reality. CO2 is transparent to incoming visible light. It’s the outgoing IR that is impeded by CO2. Here’s the spectrum. Is CO2 really located halfway between the sun and the earth?

Google is censoring Climategate!!!
Financial Post – Lawrence Solomon:
http://tinyurl.com/yctbtgc

Old Jim Hansen just trots out his same old assumption. He believes that he can estimate temperatures in adjacent grids that have no sensors and do so without falsifying the data.
Response 1: Of course, he can. If you do not measure temperature in the adjacent grid, your estimate cannot be wrong.
Response 2: Now, that is some funky science. Sure, jim, estimate the adjacent grid. But the science begins when you install sensors in the next grid and use them to verify or falsify your estimate.
Old Jim Hansen should understand that we will be satisfied with nothing less than sensors in each grid and a comparable number of sensors throughout the atmosphere. There’s Old Jim’s next grant proposal and he should get to work on it if he wants to be taken seriously.

[quote]Joel Shore (16:22:06) :
I am not sure how you get your intuition. What is your intuition for what would happen to you if you were placed in a room with 0.038% of plutonium?[\quote]
Are you insane? You’re comparing X-rays to microwave. Get a life. Get an EM spectrum chart. You obviously don’t have a clue. (Sorry, mod, I can’t take much more of this ignorance.)
[quote]deech56 (16:49:32) :
Really? Most of the atmosphere (O2 and N2) is transparent to infrared radiation,[\quote]
Demonstrably untrue by anyone with any knowledge of AAS/AES, unless rephrased to identify the specific wavelength ranges you are discussing. And the ranges had better be really d**m tight.
[quote] Ric Werme (17:10:52) :
At certain important infrared wavelengths of light,…[\quote]
What is this, a coordinated attack? Please explain in simple terms, in the same manner in which you whack jobs (sorry, that may not include you personally) always do, what exactly it is that makes one frequency of the EM spectrum more important than any other one? Is it your imaginary “windows”? Guess what, they are exactly that, IMAGINARY! There are no windows in the atmosphere, there is only the vacuum beyond it. The spectral “windows” are of no more importance than the lines on the map of the world, which separate countries from each other and are also – wait for it – IMAGINARY!
I have a suggestion for you true believers. The next time the temperature in your house starts heading south, simple open the CGA valve on a very large cylinder of compressed CO2 and bask in the warmth (Seal your windows first, we wouldn’t want you to pollute the atmosphere the rest of us are trying to enjoy, would we?).

Theo Goodwin says:

Old Jim Hansen just trots out his same old assumption. He believes that he can estimate temperatures in adjacent grids that have no sensors and do so without falsifying the data.

Actually, if you read the statement that Hansen et al. have put out ( http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2010/20100115_Temperature2009.pdf ) , you will see that they have done considerable testing of the assumption that they make. In fact, their testing of this goes back many, many years.
And, they do NOT estimate temperatures from temperatures in adjacent grids. They estimate temperature ANOMALIES in this way. The two are very different beasts: Temperatures are not strongly correlated over distance. (In fact, if you consider a mountainous region like the top of Mt. Washington and the valley only a few miles away, you can see how a few miles can make a huge difference in surface temperature!) However, temperature ANOMALIES turn out to be correlated over quite large regions. I.e., if we have a cold month here in Rochester, it is also likely to be colder than average in, say, Buffalo and Syracuse and the Adirondack Mountains…and, to a slightly lesser degree, even more distant places like New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.

Right Joel, all the work that E. M. Smith has done demonstrating the gross dishonesty in the numbers has been answered by your short refutation… Riiiiighhhht………….

Some comment on : If It’s That Warm, How Come It’s So Damned Cold?
James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, Ken Lo, link above in lead comments.
This seems to have been written during the current NH cold spell. Since conditions are so obviously not what they’ve been predicting you would think that a comment with a title like this would be their best shot. Well, I find nothing convincing here at all. In fact, they hardly seem to be trying.
They say ”There is a contradiction between the observed continued warming trend and popular perceptions about climate trends. Frequent statements include: “There has been global cooling over the past decade.” ”
The main reason for this (they say) is that HdCRUT has 1998 as their hottest year, while GISS has that as 2005. Investigating why the difference, they show that if they adopt the same gridding as HadCRUT they get the same result (their Figure 4; warmest 1998, slight cooling since then). They don’t seem to notice that what they demonstrating is that the whole of the rise that they claim comes not from the actual data but from the interpolated “data”. Remove the interpolation, remove the warming. In passing, they also demonstrate that the interpolation is in no way necessary to get a result. They can do it without, they just get the wrong answer.
In attemting to justify their methods, they say that with interpolation
“the patterns of warm and cool regions have realistic‐looking meteorological patterns”, not bothering to say what it looks like without (the actual observations are maybe “unrealistic”?).
They acknowledge that this is qualitative support, and continue: ” One way to estimate …uncertainty, or possible error, can be obtained via use of the complete time series of global surface temperature data generated by a global climate model that has been demonstrated to have REALISTIC spatial and temporal variability of surface temperature.[my caps]” No doubt this REALISTIC means the the model output agrees with the assumptions that underlie their interpolation algorithm. And yes, the find the “errors” are very small.
As far as I can see, that’s all they’ve got.

rbateman (16:51:32) :
A machinist would say that the C02 concentration in the atmosphere is .38 of a thousandth.
Try opening your dial caliper to 1/3 of a thousandth. Takes some practice and due diligence to deal with the backlash.
That’s what micrometers are for. Hope it’s a good one with carbide faces. Set the four-tenths on the Vernier marks, you can eyeball it just under for .38, flick the spindle lock. If really fussy you can check the gap on an optical comparator.
And it better be a regular type. Electronic digitals are cute with the implied precision, but just try getting the correct feel for them to repeat that very last digit every time. And the mechanical digitals are only good until you drop them one time too hard and/or one time too many. 😉
Of course, machinists know that four-tenths can be critical, even one tenth can be important, especially on tight tolerances like small holes. So they likely wouldn’t say that. One good fart spread throughout the shop, now that would be a good description.

Dr. Pielke.
It’s very interesting the way certain factions of climate science leave unfinished threads and unresolved issues. One such “hole” in the science is
peterson’s postulate ( his 2003 paper on UHI) where he postulates ( his word) that temperature stations should be located in “cool parks,” That seemed a fair “postulate” that was begging for on site verification. With Surfacestations at over 1000 sites visited, perhaps we can say something definitive about this ‘cool park’ postulate.
Also, thx for the plug

Dear Anthony,
I have been following your postings for a couple of months and I am obviously the reason for the huge increase in the number of hits that you have been having. Well done you!
I am not a meteorologist or a scientist. I am not a denier or an alarmist. But I do like to reduce our collective use of resources – be it oil or coal or gas or gold.
I was particularly interested in two recent posts “Coal Creek Redux” and “Darwin Zero”. I have been looking at some temperature data from Macau (or Macao if you prefer). Don’t ask why but I was.
For those that don’t know, Macau is a very small port city on the southern coast of China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macau but use with the usual caution about wiki). It used to be a Portuguese colony until recently and they have weather records that go back quite a long way. I have no special knowledge about the weather recording station there – it may be that it was a mercury thermometer hanging out of somebody’s window for all I know – but I doubt it. Macau is a very small place and I suspect that the weather station was in the old Portuguese fort (probably for all of its life) and it was probably read religiously from when it was set up. Anyway, cutting to the chase, the Macau meteorological service have a website which lists a hundred years of temperature data 1901-2000 (see http://www.smg.gov.mo/www/smg/centenary2/index_four.htm ). They have more data, as well, going forward and back but not as easily accessible. I thought that I’d take a look at it. It is not in an easy database format but with a bit of effort I was able to export the mean temperature data, year at a time, on a daily basis. The advantage appeared to me that with daily means, minima and maxima the temperatures were less likely to have been ‘adjusted’. I thought, well does this show any warming or cooling over the century?
Most of the analyses that I have seen elsewhere present an annual mean temperature and see what the trend is over the period. I did this for Macau. See below.
What’s up with that? Well in this case we have 55 annual points covering the 100 year period (because I have not completed grabbing the data). Each of these points represents the mean value from 365 (or 366 in a leap year) daily mean temperature values for the year in question. The trend line, using a linear regression, provides an estimate for the mean temperature in 1900 of 22.28°C and in 2000 of 22.62°C. Thus, we have an estimated warming of 0.34°C in the century from 1900 to 2000.
As you know, each time that you get a mean or average value of a variable and state it by itself, you lose some of the information that lies behind the mean. Thus a yearly mean temperature loses a lot of information about the variability within that year. I thought that getting the mean monthly temperatures might be a second estimate – and this is what the plot looks like for the year’s that I have grabbed so far. I’m sure somebody with more time could grab the years that I have not got so far (1906 to 1910, etc)
What’s this mean? If taken at face value, it looks as if the mean of the ‘mean monthly temperatures’ averaged month at a time was about 22.4°C. It also appears to mean that the trend of increase in the mean temperature is 0.0003°C per month. (We need to be a bit careful because I’ve used Microsoft Excel and Excel does some strange things when you use dates and converts them to numbers – starting at 1 January 1900). This gives an estimated potential increase of 0.39°C for the century from 1900 to 2000.
Hold on a second though, this is giving equal weight to every month in the year. Are the very hot months and the very cold months skewing the data? Another way of looking at the same data is to check what happens in each quinquennium. See below:
In this case, the slopes of the trend lines are probably not relevant since they are only taken over a short time period of five years. We can see, however, that there is no large shift in the curves from the period 1901-1905 to the period 1996-2000. We do get estimates of 22.49°C for the first quinquennium and 22.71°C for the last quinquennium of the century. This represents an estimated warming trend of 0.22°C (over 95 years) or 0.23°C over 100 years.
Another way of looking at the same data is to first get the mean values for each month – we know that there is a nearly periodic cycle of about 12 months which affects the temperature. If we take the average for each month over the 100 years then (so far) we get the following average annual cycle:
We can use these monthly means to get the deviations in each year from the monthly means and therefore de-trend the monthly data for the effect of the annual cycle.
This de-trended data, using 660 monthly data points (out of an available 1200 data points for 100 years) provides a very slight estimated warming trend of 0.03°C per century. You can see that the spread of data is roughly in the range ±5°C and there do not appear to be ‘outliers’ of large magnitude in the data set. However, it might be as well to look at the distribution of the de-trended data. See below:
The distribution of the de-trended data is shown on the histogram. Also plotted is a Normal distribution for comparison. The data looks pretty normal and the extreme values – the hottest and coldest months in the century do not look outstandingly hot or cold – the sort of values that might be expected.
Of course, we can do a further check on this – and I suggest that somebody with more time could do so. This is to grab to maximum and minimum temperature data sets on a daily basis and check that the maximum monthly temperatures and the minimum monthly temperatures always dance above and below the mean monthly temperatures respectively. Another advantage of checking the maxima and minima would be that one could see whether the maxima are getting larger (hot getting hotter) or the minima are getting smaller (cold getting colder) or vice versa. This would tell us more about why there is a warming or cooling trend – if indeed there is such a trend.
(Just as an aside, there seems to be a tendency for the modern environmental scientists to discard ‘outliers’ just because they are outliers. Clearly, there is case for do so if, for instance, somebody has misread the original handwritten record and has read ‘54’ instead of ‘34’, but I think one should only discard outliers if one can see why – and then tell the world which outliers have been discarded and why.)
Oh, I forgot to mention, Macau used to be a very small place indeed as far as population is concerned. In recent years its population has grown quite considerably. According the World Bank, Macau had a population of 172,608 in 1960 and 526,178 in 2008 (http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:MAC&q=macau+population ). I do not know what the population was in 1900, but I would guess at less than 50,000 and maybe much fewer. Should there be a sign of an UHI (urban heat island) here? I suspect not, but that may be for others to look at.
What’s the point of all this? Well I think the first lesson that it teaches is that for each temperature reading station we need to have some history. Where was the temperature read and how? Has the temperature reading or system been changed over time? These are some of the points that were being made in the post about Darwin. Is the station data from a consistent source and is it reliable? (By the way, Willis might want to look at temperature data from nearby Indonesian islands such as Bali to compare with Darwin – probably more relevant than Alice Springs.) The second lesson is that each station needs to be analysed in detail before it is added to the global database. The third lesson is that using a linear regression trend to project forward may or may not be appropriate. Are there any other trends within the data which can be decomposed and thus eliminated from the data? Is Macau relevant in any way as a station to search for global warming? Search me!
I have not completed the analysis of the Macau data – just started in fact – but you can get different answers depending upon the analysis – particularly if you have a small number of data points.
As you can see, I’ve just done what I’m suggesting that nobody should do – presenting data that is incomplete and only partially analysed!
Cheers
Bob the Builder
PS You can see that I’m an amateur and can’t submit the charts that go with this post. Let me know how and I’ll send them separately.

RE LAShaffer (18:56:01) :

What is this, a coordinated attack? Please explain in simple terms, in the same manner in which you whack jobs (sorry, that may not include you personally) always do, what exactly it is that makes one frequency of the EM spectrum more important than any other one? Is it your imaginary “windows”?

I would guess that all the “whack jobs” have their physics textbooks open to the same chapter. Just think of it as independent confirmation of results. 😉

RE Ric Werme (21:19:15) :

One problem I have with the historical contexts people like to fall back on, is that I like to think science has progressed since the days of Hershel (solar activity and climate), Tyndall, and Arrhenius. In particular, the CO2 studies neglected convection, and while the CO2 blanket slows down some of the IR transport, convection provides another means of transporting heat upward. The more CO2 slows down IR radiation, the more important other processes become, and that simply wasn’t examined. As far as I know, it may still not be well examined or understood.

Ric, you raise an interesting point, but we should look on these earlier studies as the building blocks of the later studies. They are incomplete in the same way that Watson and Crick (1953) was incomplete. (You might also note that their earliest papers had an error in the number of hydrogen bonds between C and G.) On a related note, Robert Grumbine wrote an interesting post about successive approximations. Reading the climate literature, especially the idea of climate sensitivity, is a study in the progress scientists have made in their understanding of climate.

Very nice explanation, Mr. Smith. Looking forward to Joel’s refutation.. but not expecting it. Joel sometimes even admits it when he missteps. This would be a good time to do it.

So E.M.Smith (05:33:14): Do you actually believe that we’re not in a warming period?

“deech56 (06:53:48) :
So E.M.Smith (05:33:14): Do you actually believe that we’re not in a warming period?”
How can anyone know with certainty as long as NASA keeps dropping cooler station locations and constant “fudgings” are added to GISS? It’s time for an apolitical accounting.

RE Mike Bryant (07:15:56) :

“deech56 (06:53:48) :
So E.M.Smith (05:33:14): Do you actually believe that we’re not in a warming period?”
How can anyone know with certainty as long as NASA keeps dropping cooler station locations and constant “fudgings” are added to GISS? It’s time for an apolitical accounting.

Well, one of those science types could look for <a href="http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1975/to:2010/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:2010/trend/plot/rss/to:2010/offset:0.25/plot/rss/to:2010/trend/offset:0.25<independent confirmation" using an independent data source.

Phil., since you only asked about the giss fudgings do you agree that many colder weather stations have been dropped?
Just wondering… Mike

I know Anthony is looking at stations in the US. Is anyone looking at the UK stations? I only ask because one of the stations is little old Hurn, now better known as Bournemouth International Airport (I love the International bit). Presumably, there will be some anomolies there over time given that the airport has expanded.
If anyone is looking at the UK stations, I’d be happy to do a reccie at Hurn and report back.

“How do you account for the fact that there is good correlation with the other data sets?”
If adjusted data correlates well with other data sets, the other data sets must have similar adjustments… Raw data would be much appreciated by those of us who paid for it.

This is such a simple case to figure. Long-term weather variations such as can be experienced with positive or negative oscillations have stronger or weaker affects on topography depending on address. For example, desert climates have higher highs and lower lows because of topography interacting with weather parameters. So when weather is extreme, so will go the desert. Clearly, topography interacts with weather.
If the experimental plots (the temperature sensors) in Hansen’s research design were reduced over time in any biased topographical or urban heat island way (which we know is the case), the results will be biased, not because of CO2 but because of experimental design changes that are biased. Until he can provide an experimental design that is clean, he absolutely cannot say that CO2 is the cause of the warming he finds. To wit: the correlation of increased temperature with decreased sensors is as strong as the correlation between increased temperature and increased CO2, with mechanisms demonstrated for both cases. So which one is it?
Hansen will eventually have to answer for his use of fiddled with data and ignored inappropriate and unexplained experimental design changes, IE sensor drop out and various code manipulations for the non-random nature of his data.
In summary, this is a plot experiment – a very simple research design that is hard to mess up if done right, and as such Hansen’s is quite possibly the worst one I have ever seen. That it gets any kind of journal press is beyond me. No statistician I know of would touch this if such data were brought to him or her for analysis. It is not even worthy of a passing score for a 5th grade plot experiment.

“A later decision made Crater Glacier the official glacier name. Despite the volcanic activity, the glacier continued to advance and by mid-2008, the glacier completely encircled the lava domes.[2][3][4][5] In addition, new glaciers (rock or ice) have formed around Crater Glacier as well.” Inside Mount Saint Helens…
Perito Moreno Glacier in the SH, also advancing… Many glaciers are advancing… and with the increased snowfall, more will be advancing. Some people say that we are losing glaciers. Nothing could be further fro the truth. They are not lost. The water is still here on the earth and as the earth goes through it’s cycles, glaciers will increase, as some are already doing. Where is the study that compares all or even most of the glaciers on earth to their mass as of five years ago. So as I have cherrypicked a couple of glaciers, you can as easily cherrypick some that have declined… I suggest we not use this very small amount of earth’s ice to try to prove anything.

RE Mike Bryant (11:29:41) :

Perito Moreno Glacier in the SH, also advancing… Many glaciers are advancing… and with the increased snowfall, more will be advancing. Some people say that we are losing glaciers. Nothing could be further fro the truth. They are not lost. The water is still here on the earth and as the earth goes through it’s cycles, glaciers will increase, as some are already doing. Where is the study that compares all or even most of the glaciers on earth to their mass as of five years ago. So as I have cherrypicked a couple of glaciers, you can as easily cherrypick some that have declined… I suggest we not use this very small amount of earth’s ice to try to prove anything.

Cherry picking some that have declined? You can see the cumulative loss here. (Source) Do you have any published information that the World Glacier Monitoring Service is wrong?

RE Smokey (11:40:35) :
Thanks for putting up all the charts, but I notice that most of the ones with trendlines start in 1997; some do not even go to the present. Besides the fact that the satellite data are an indirect measurement and is most useful for the analysis of temperatures at different atmospheric depths, you know that 10-12 years is to short a time to define a multi-decade trend. And the UAH chart from the beginning of the record (this one) that you posted does not have a trendline (you can’t make a conclusion based on one “May 09” point). I put the same data into WFT and came up with this. Looks like a trend of about 0.17&degC/decade, which isn’t that far off from the GISTEMP results.
As far as the “financial gain” and propaganda stuff, please spare me; I am a scientist in another field (I’ve done work in animal models, HIV and vaccines, so I know contentious) and these arguments mean little to me. Show me the publications to support your points. Those are the standards I use in my own work, and I see no reason not to apply those same standards to climate science.

deech56 (12:26:40)
This is the same UN that initiated the Himalayan Glacier Melt fiasco??
Please tell me you don’t think they have a shred of credibility left. Also, at the end of the report they ask for much, much more to handle increased monitoring of the earth’s glaciers. Why do they need increased monitoring? Because the job is not being done well enough now.
Have you ever wondered why NASA hasn’t released satellite photos of even half the glaciers from five years ago and from today? I think I have an idea why that info isn’t available. Sad that their increasing politicization has hurt their credibility as well.
The glaciers contain less than 1% of the earth’s ice. Believe me that you don’t want that percentage to increase substantially.

Re Deech 56
…..I’m not Joel, but I will make a couple of points.
1. The change in CO2 occurs about 800 years after the start of the temperature change, but continues throughout the warming and cooling phases.
2. The forcing from Milankovitch cycles cannot account for the temperature change without the inclusion of feedbacks – and we know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and as CO2 levels increase, they feed back on the earth’s heat balance.
3. Calculations of climate sensitivity have included the analysis of the last glacial maximum, and the number that comes up (1.2–4.3 oC) is close to the IPCC estimates. Of course, compared to the last million years plus, we are in uncharted territory in a way, so it is useful to look back even further, at a study in which the authors found a range of 1.6-5.5 oC; again, consistent with the IPCC estimates…
Deech 56, be sure to continue your conclusions by noting that CO2 concentration then falls 400 to 1500 years AFTER T decrease at the onset of glaciation!!
And continue and note that during the Eemian glaciation, global mean surface temperatures were 3 to 5oC HIGHER than now, but with CO2 at 280ppmv. So here we have an scenario where T’s were 3-5oC higher than now with CO2 100ppmv LESS than now. So what drove these higher T’s during the Eemian Interglacial?
So we “know” that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but its effect in driving T changes at concentrations of 280ppmv and above are tiny – the data speaks for itself. And, why don’t you mention the role of clouds vs CO2 in your feedback models?

rbateman, you can view CDO NCDC data for free from a .edu, .k12, or .gov domain. It is apparently done that way so that people don’t use the data commercially (without breaking a rule of their provider). All of the weather stations use NCDC data. This saves taxpayer money.

RE Leo G (13:39:36) :

Smokey, thanx for all of that.
Just an observation from this chart – http://3.bp.blogspot.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/S0pG400b4TI/AAAAAAAAAGA/DFyRKeT6gqg/s1600-h/Twelve+Year+Satellite+Trend2.bmp
Looking at the reference to El nino/nina, it appears that the climate is much more sensitive to cooling forcings then to warming forcings. Or am I just “seeing” things?

What kind of analysis did you perform? Is it reasonable to calculate sensitivities based on such short-term events? Just wondering.

deech56 (13:57:22) : – {What kind of analysis did you perform? Is it reasonable to calculate sensitivities based on such short-term events? Just wondering.}
It was a peer review.
You know, you peer at it and make a review! 🙂
Not everything posted on blogs has to be serious my friend.

RE Roger Knights (14:22:29) :

[Glaciers have] been retreating for centuries, most of them, before manmade CO2 increased – what might be the reason for that?
Lower precipitation and humidity, mostly. Regarding glacial retreat, see section 2.2 (pages 28-32), “Glaciers,” of Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu’s paper, “Two Natural Components of Recent Climate Change,” here (as a 50-Mb PDF):
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/little_ice_age.php

What do your sources that discuss the long-term retreat tell you? And was Dr. Akasofu’s paper published in a journal? I would be interested in reading the abstract before spending the time downloading the full paper.

RE Richard M (15:12:12) :

In general I find people in medical research to be quite skeptical of AGW. The medical research community proved oh so clearly the problems with research bias many years ago. Hence, the adherence to double blind studies. Clearly, there is no equivalent in climate research. Bias is rampant and anyone with any sense of medical research history should be very, very skeptical.

My experience reading the writings of HIV/AIDS and vaccine deniers has led me to be skeptical of “skeptical” claims against the science. Double blind studies are important, but that’s because of the placebo effect; at my end of research double-blind studies weren’t really feasible. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t consider bias and try to minimize it, of course.
But the point that I am trying to make is that I approach a field outside of my own area of expertise the same way that I approach any scientific research – looking for the best sources of information, and that is the scientific literature, paying particular attention to any findings by organizations like the National Academy of Sciences.
I had the advantage of being able to manipulate conditions in my experiments. In fields like astronomy climatology, geology and paleontology, researchers depend a lot on observations, but we still accept things like the big bang, age of the earth, and evolution. That’s life, and in science we use the tools that are available.

RE Smokey (16:11:46) :

deech56 (12:59:47):
“As far as the “financial gain” and propaganda stuff, please spare me…”
You should be damn mad that “global warming studies” have already drained tens of billions of dollars away from other, more important research – like the field you work in. The global warming scam is a monumental rip-off of taxpayer funds, and it starves all other areas of publicly funded science.
There are only so many tax dollars available to go around. That is why the promoters of AGW run and hide from any real debate. That’s why Al Gore and the rest duck out of interviews [unless the person doing the interview is a trusted pet]. And that is why there are no true scientific skeptics in the whole bunch. The climate alarmists have both front feet in the public trough; they are not going to derail their gravy train by answering questions.

And you answer with claims about financial gain and propaganda.

You asked for publications. OK. I can provide several dozen if you like in the next few minutes. But since the central aspect of the CO2=CAGW hypothesis concerns the question of climate sensitivity, I’ll provide one that answers that question [Prof Richard Lindzen arrives at roughly the same answer, although he is a little more conservative. But he’s in the same ball park].
To give some background on the one I’m providing, it came about due to the persistence of Lord Monckton, who ultimately prevailed against the editorial board of the American Physical Society – which had tried to shut him out of the debate.
By finally publishing his paper…

Spencer did provide a decent analysis pointing out the flaws in Lindzen and Choi, but Monckton? C’mon. You don’t actually look to him as an authority, do you? That article in the APS newsletter was in no way, shape or form a peer-reviewed publication. There are many more reliable sources for information on climate sensitivity, like the review paper by Knutti & Hegerl from Nature Geosciences. This paper highlights the idea of independent confirmation (as does James Annan’s analysis, but it’s getting kind of late).

“NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis. The analysis utilizes three independent data sources provided by other agencies. Quality control checks are regularly performed on that data. The analysis methodology as well as updates to the analysis are publicly available on our website. The agency is confident of the quality of this data and stands by previous scientifically based conclusions regarding global temperatures.” (GISS temperature analysis website: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/)” [note: I could not find the specific url from NASA, so I welcome being sent this original source].
I, too, could not find this quote on any NASA/GISS web page or publication. Nor could I find an answer to Pileke’s request for corroboration on any site, pro or anti in this debate.
Has anybody yet discovered the source for this quote, or is it time to consider that it has been fabricated?

Smokey
This typically happens when an organization like NASA realizes they have made a statement that can easily be contradicted by the facts:
There is, then, no proof that this paragraph was ever given out by James Hansen. I do not know KUSI news service, or John Coleman, so I have no assumption to work with regarding credibility of same.
NASA and Hansen’s statements have been quite consistent regarding data and methodology – this one alleged quote is an anomaly. As you point out, GISS makes adjustments to temp data, as everyone knows and no one hides that fact. The paragraph reads fake, or like a bad paraphrase. ‘Manipulation’ is weasel wording. It’s very difficult to credit Hansen appropriating this language to defend methods.
As this quote is unsubstantiated, its provenance is neither confirmed nor denied. Any proper skeptic would come to the same conclusion.
As an aside, GISS use three different (and independent) data sets – global, US and Arctic. I wonder if there might have been some confusion here.

“”
Joel Shore (18:24:01) :
R John says:
Joel Shore —
C’mon how do you get around the logarithmic effect of the absorption of CO2 and any other gas!!! Adding CO2 at this point has zero effect on its absorbance!
A logarithm doesn’t saturate. What a logarithmic dependence means is that you need the same FRACTION of increase to produce the same amount of effect. This is why scientists talk about the effect of a CO2 doubling rather than the effect of raising CO2 by a fixed amount in ppm.
Ric Werme says:
‘While appeals to century-old science may help bolster arguments about the science being settled, it also implies that temperature should be tracking the Keeling CO2 curve, but it’s not.’
No…It implies that over large enough periods of time, the temperature trend should be upward, which it has been. On times short enough that the ups-and-downs associated with ENSO and the like are dominating, the temperature trend is not expected to always be positive. And, in fact, some periods of ten or even 15 years where the least-trend fit is negative are a robust feature of climate models run with increasing greenhouse gases.
Getting back to my original comment – are you suggesting that adding 100 ppm to current CO2 levels will have the same impact that the first 100 ppm did?
No. But, I am suggesting that appeals to “saturation” are bogus, particularly in arguing that this somehow contradicts the mainstream science. The fact that the dependence of forcing on CO2 concentration is approximately logarithmic is well-known, well-understood, and in fact the reason that scientists talk about the effects in the way that they do (in terms of a doubling of concentration””
here we go with the well-known, well-understood claims again. why do I get the distinct feeling that you neither know nor understand what is going in the atmosphere joel? Perhaps you might like to explain what is happening, maybe starting with the saturation of the peaks and the real effect one might expect from a pathlength reduction of 10 cm to 9.5 cm or how the width of absorption lines decrease with dropping pressure, or maybe the shifting of the peaks because of the pressure.
T

RE Smokey (18:10:15) :

The Scientific Method doesn’t only require that an upstart hypothesis must explain reality better than the established theory [usually done by making more accurate predictions, or falsifying the existing theory]; the Scientific Method also requires full and transparent cooperation from those proposing any new new hypothesis.
Why? Because the goal isn’t one-upmanship, or protecting lucrative grant fiefs. The goal is scientific truth, which is arrived at only by attacking and attempting to falsify a hypothesis by skeptical scientists – and even by those scientists proposing the hypothesis. Everyone cooperates in trying to falsify a hypothesis [or a theory, or even a Law – just as the current search for the Higgs boson is intended to verify or falsify the current model of gravity].
Whatever remains standing after all attempts at falsification is considered to be as close to scientific truth as we can get.

There’s a great deal of competitiveness in science (I worked in pharma/biotech and we weren’t any more open than we had to be), but what is accepted is that independent verification of results doesn’t mean examining one data set over and over agin, but replicating a study using information found in a manuscript. Even better, it could mean using different tools to arrive at the same result. Kind of like scientists demonstrating recent warming by direct measurement, indirect measurement by satellite MSUs and by examining the effects of warmer temperatures (glacier melting, for example).

Being ‘skeptical of skeptical claims,’ as you said, is the wrong way to look at it. The job of scientific skeptics [which includes all honest scientists] is to falsify a hypotheses if they can, whether the hypothesis is CO2=CAGW, or the theory of natural climate variability. Being skeptical of skeptics has no place in the Scientific Method; it is sophistry.

No, requiring that “skeptics” arise to the same standards as actual scientists is a way to wade through claims that are dubious or spurious. When scientific paper after scientific paper show the same conclusion, and a random web site disputes this scientific conclusion but does not submit this startling finding to a journal for scrutiny by experts in the field, I have to wonder about the veracity of the “skeptical” claim. If we don’t have some kind of minimal filter for information (otherwise, we’d be looking for medical information from Kevin Trudeau) then we’re left with so many claims that we would either throw up our hands saying we don’t know anything or pick and choose what to believe based on our biases. When “skeptics” state things that I, as a non-expert, can easily refute, I have to wonder about their reliability.

RE Richard M (20:31:41) :

deech56 (16:58:44) :
“Increased water and agricultural stresses and risks to coastlines don’t sound too pleasant to me. Food production is pretty important.”
Then you should be for global warming. Ask any farmer if warm or cold is better? No? You’d rather trust the ClimateGate team? Really? Why is that? The truth is most plants love heat. As long as they have water heat presents absolutely no problems. On top of that, higher CO2 allows plants to get by with less water. Not to mention that plants love more CO2 (it’s called plant food for a reason). The only “agricultural stresses” of increased heat/CO2 are imaginary.
Also, it appears you don’t question any of the AGW articles because you *trust* them as fellow scientists. Actually, that is very unscientific of you. I thought you were on the younger side because that unscientific trust has somehow become commonplace. You will learn eventually. You will find out that this situation is not unlike the 1960s in medical research. Those scientists thought they knew what they were doing as well. I think this is often the problem with new fields of study where researchers have little grasp of what they don’t understand.

Unless I am mistaken, the “ClimateGate Team” is not the group that studies the effects of AGW on agriculture, etc. You also post the false dichotomy between “cold” and “warm” when we are discussing keeping the range of temperatures around the levels we have been used to over the whole of civilization or changing things around. I don’t get your point about medical research in the 1960s; that was before my research career (unless you count my many microscopic examinations of pond water or fossil collecting), but I am no spring chicken, and I don’t understand why you are lecturing me about science.

RE: Smokey (21:32:43) :

Who to believe? Mother Earth, which is cooling as CO2 rises, thus empirically falsifying the CO2=CAGW [“AGW”] hypothesis? Or Mr Phil again? The planet’s verdict trumps anyone’s contrary opinion. The Earth is telling the truth.

I believe that would be Dr. Phil. Do you have a statistical analysis to support your claim that “Mother Earth” is cooling? A simple t test of a linear regression would suffice.

Up next: deech56 (17:34:56)
“Spencer did provide a decent analysis pointing out the flaws in Lindzen and Choi, but Monckton? C’mon. You don’t actually look to him as an authority, do you?”
Despite Mr deetch’s ad hominem attack against Lord Monckton [as opposed to trying to find any flaws in his scholarly paper], it is a fact that Lord Monckton is every bit as qualified as Gavin Schmidt [also a mathematician], or Rajendra Pachauri [an economist], or Michael Mann [a geologist], and just about all the rest of the alarmist crowd who pretend they are more qualified. They’re not, of course. Monckton is equal to the best of them, and better than most. And unlike the alarmists, Monckton isn’t suckling at the public teat. He pays his own way.
Also, glad to see deech acknowledge Dr Roy Spencer. He should remind Phil that Dr Spencer knows what he’s talking about regarding climate theories.

I asked a question; is that an ad hominem attack? OK, maybe I seemed a bit incredulous, but if I pointed out that Monckton is not a reliable authority on climate, that statement would not be an ad hominem attack – I could easily point to any number of analyses of his writings. Pointing out that his essay was not peer-reviewed is not an ad hominem attack, and neither is Spencer’s criticism of Lindzen and Choi (oh, and if it’s “Dr.” Spencer, that’s “Dr.” Deech. LOL). BTW, I am not necessarily endorsing all of Spencer’s writings – his LC09 critique is cited by people from all viewpoints and he has made a considerable contribution through his MSU analysis, but that doesn’t mean he is right about everything. So you don’t need to pit me against Phil.; he knows what he is talking about.

Finally, even I could find a better citation than the one deech provided by Knutti & Hegerl, who cite only Svante Arrenhius’ 1896 paper, with its high climate sensitivity conclusion – but without ever mentioning the fact that Arrenhius recanted his conclusion a decade later in his 1906 paper, with its much lower sensitivity number. By neglecting to mention Arrhenius’ correction of his earlier views, the K&H citation is little more than alarmist propaganda.

There were 101 references in the list; the Arrhenius and Callendar references were for historical purposes. Alarmist propaganda? You kind of lost me there.

The reason this AGW scam has made it as far as it has is due to the problem deech and Phil have both avoided here: the deliberate stonewalling of information requests by skeptical scientists, and the blanket refusal to cooperate with others attempting to to falsify AGW. They don’t care about finding the truth. They only care about the money and status that result from their AGW advocacy.
McIntyre & McKitrick worked long and hard to falsify Mann’s treemometer-based Hokey Stick, when Mann should have cooperated with them from the get-go. The hiding of taxpayer financed data and methods by taxpayer financed scientists is contrary to the Scientific Method. It is based on the assumption that AGW is a fact, and that the data must be hammered into conformance, or fabricated outright, to fit their pre-conceived AGW conclusions.
If Mann and the rest really believed they had solid evidence backing up their AGW hypothesis, they would certainly have produced it. The reason they didn’t is because they knew their hypothesis would be torn to shreds, just like Mann’s Hokey Stick was.

M&M did not falsify MBH98; they criticized the PCA, but we know that other PCAs (and other investigators) confirm their results. But you forget that Mann, et al. 2008 is really the new standard (well, also Mann, et al. 2009) – and Mann, et al. have provided solid evidence for their millennial-scale temperature reconstructions. The new studies build upon and improve the older studies. Science marches on. Of course, this just tells us what temperatures are and were and don’t necessarily speak to the cause of recent temperature increases.
And unless you have more reliable information, you might want to avoid speculating about scientists’ motivation.

1) Statement by James Hansen that mandmade GHG’s has given rise to a radiative imbalance averaging about 0.8 watts/meter squared from 2000 to present, which will “melt the ice, warm the atmosphere and warm the oceans.”
Prediction: From 2000 to present, ocean heat anomaly will increase by approximately 10^23 joules.
Result: Ocean heat anomaly increased by zero joules.

That is not factually correct. The latest data (which stay may have some problems, of course) shows a very significant rise in heat content since 2000: http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/latest-revisions-to-ocean-heat-content.html

If this particular plank was secure, we would expect more and more studies confirming the hockey stick. In fact, we find just the opposite: hockey sticks are being broken while more and more studies confirm the medieval warm period as a real global phenomenon.

First of all, your claim that AGW rests one way or the other on past variability is not really correct, especially since we don’t have a very good handle on natural forcings over the millenium timescale. Second of all, many studies have in fact confirmed the basic conclusion of Mann et al. that the late 20th century was warmer than the MWP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png So, modulo issues of how accurate the temperature proxies are (for which I admit there are valid concerns), most of the evidence supports that conclusion.

3) GHG theory predicts that as GHG’s are added to the atmosphere, surface temperatures would increase while outgoing radiation from top of the atmosphere would decrease.
Result: Lindzen & Choi show that this is not happening.

Basically, what this (and some of your other claims amount to) is, “I can cherrypick a paper from the peer-reviewed literature (where hundreds, if not thousands of papers are published in this field each year) that supports my point-of-view. Lindzen and Choi has not been out a long time and there is already a comment in the works arguing that it is fatally flawed. Heck, even Roy Spencer is very skeptical of it!

4) Climate models predict higher warming in the tropical mid troposphere.
Result: This has not been observed.

This is an extreme oversimplification of a complex issue, with various data problems…and, at any rate, does not speak to whether the warming seen is due to AGW or another mechanism, since the amplification is expected for any warming mechanism. (Also, the most direct consequence for the climate models of this amplification not occurring is that they would then be predicting a negative lapse rate feedback that does not seem to be occurring.)

5) Climate models can only hindcast the 1945 – 1976 decline by assuming a high level of human caused aerosol pollution.
Result: A recent paper by Gunnar Myher concuded that the cooling effect of these aerosols has been overstated by 30%.

Again, that is a claim made in one paper, which you choose to hold up as the gospel because it supports your pre-conceptions. Besides which, I believe that this paper spoke to only the direct effects of aerosols (unless I am confusing it with another paper), and I believe their results were within the IPCC’s stated (admittedly pretty broad) range for this forcing. And, they did not directly address whether their results are in any way inconsistent with the hindcasting (which frankly has enough uncertainties in it that such a revision might not make that much of a difference).
Basically, what you have come up with is a list of reasons to hope that AGW might be wrong, if you want to ignore the mountains of evidence on the other side and just cherry-pick a few results that agree with what you want the answer to be.

If your study is based on adjusted data, you should keep a copy of the raw data AND the adjusted data. Hansen uses adjusted data (I don’t know if he asked for the raw data as well). And then adjusts it some more. To be absolutely clean, he should have started with raw data. He would then have reported on what he did to the raw data to adjust it, and then reported on the analysis. He muddied his own work by using adjusted data to start with. If it had been me, I would have required copies of the original raw data sheets be sent to me from who ever keeps them.
By the way, Hansen’s work has not been independently verified. Other research groups have come up with other sets of adjusted and analyzed data that says something different (re: 1934 versus 1998, etc) than what his says. That means one of two things: 1) one of them (or more) is wrong, or 2) they are all wrong.

Even if it warms, I would have to see convincing analysis that rules out natural causes. The current jet stream, and it’s interaction with El Nino, is warming up the upper western states, as it should, now that the AO is hanging around neutral. Record high temps are being set but all due to easily explained weather systems. Therefore, you can’t take the averages from these kinds of weather related events and suddenly change the cause to CO2. If you do, you are being disingenuous.
Here is the truth. Short term weather-related temperatures are gathered and averaged over a long period of time. When you put them all into a graph, using whatever averaging technique you want, IE linear, running, or Hansenized code, it means that you now have long term weather temperatures. Period.