Climate Audit requested of the Australian BoM and CSIRO

Great news, I’ve emailed this to Andrew Bolt, so he can give it full coverage.

I just posted this comment over at Jo’s site.
Sorry guys, this won’t happen.
Once Julia gets wind of this, you’ll find there will be a massive funding cut to the Australian National Audit Office because all the money has gone fixing up the flood damage in Queensland.
Really, do you think the guvmint will let this happen, after all, they have a pretty good track record at feeding mushrooms !

I sure hope there are opportunities to support this move by other Australians; polls, letters, signatures, whatever. This needs to be pushed.

[snip]

The Barrie Harrops of Australia will attempt to make sure that this never sees the light of day, it would put them out of business.

They can adjust until they get the answers they want, but water still freezes at the same temperature.
Here in Merritt Island, Fl two mornings ago the official temperature just a few miles to our north (KSC) was 37F. I had ice on my cars and frost on the ground.

pay money for Kyoto “obligations”?
ya right, like that is going to happen.

A squeaky wheel will get greased. Good job Climate Audit and Jo Nova.

Love to hear what some old Aboriginal fellas’ records would be

Someone set us up the BOM!

How many of the sites around the world have had the data altered? As the whole basis of anthropogenic global warming is on the increases in the tempertures from these sites surely it should be made unequivocally plain that the data are not being manipulated. But is this possible? I agree with others from Australia who have posted here, the Australian government won’t want to know. The current prime minister said just before the election in August 2010 “there will be no carbon tax in my government”. She is now endeavouring to get a carbon tax in place. Is it likely the government is going to approve an audit of the temperature data?

I’m surprised Kyoto is still operational. I’ll be even more surprised if so much as a dime gets paid because of it. Where would that money go, BTW? General UN funds?

The request for an audit is phony. The reasons behind the adjustments are explained by peer reviewed publications.
http://reg.bom.gov.au/amm/docs/2004/dellamarta.pdf
Updating Australia’s high-quality annual temperature dataset
An updated and improved version of the Australian high-quality
annual mean temperature dataset of Torok and Nicholls
(1996) has been produced. This was achieved by undertaking a
thorough post-1993 homogeneity assessment using a number of
objective and semi-objective techniques, by matching closed
records onto continuing records, and by adding some shorter
duration records in data-sparse regions. Each record has been
re-assessed for quality on the basis of recent metadata, resulting
in many records being rejected from the dataset. In addition,
records have been re-examined for possible urban contamination
using some new approaches. This update has highlighted
the need for accurate and complete station metadata. It
has also demonstrated the value of at least two years of overlapping
observations for major site changes to ensure the
homogeneity of the climate record. A total of 133 good-quality,
homogenised records have been produced. A non-urban subset
of 99 stations provides reliable calculations of Australia’s annual
mean temperature anomalies with observation error variances
between 15 and 25 per cent of the total variance and
decorrelation length scales greater than the average inter-station
separation.

REPLY: Oh please, peer reviewed publications are not the pinnacle of truth. I (or anyone else) could write up a paper that would make it through peer review that could be totally wrong. It has happened lots of times. Peer review isn’t auditing, and it often doesn’t do much beyond have a conversation about the merits of the paper. Peer review is an unpaid profession. We get what we pay for.
I get so sick of people like you touting peer review as “truth”, when that peer review often doesn’t even bother with the job of replication. If the peer reviewers of Michael Mann’s paleo-trainwreck had bothered to do replication, climate science wouldn’t be so damaged today. In fact I doubt that Climate Audit or WUWT would even exist had such replication been done.
Pull your head out of your butt Mr. Adler, demand replication, demand the numbers add up. That’s what’s going on here. – Anthony

Martin (February 15, 2011 at 8:17 pm) asks “Who is Ken Stewart?” I suggest that you do yourself a favour and visit
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/giss-manipulates-climate-data-in-mackay/

If you stomp around the walls long enough they will fall down. You just have to keep it up until they fall. pg

The temperature record and AGW may soon be taking a back seat.
Given what has happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, and a few other places lately, don’t be surprised if people start reacting to the stupidity of western governments, their ridiculous levels of personal and business tax; and the enormous debt that governments have burdened themselves with. Soon there will be no money for windmills and solar panels or carbon offsets as many state governments can hardly afford the interest on their debt and they continue to run annual deficits increasing their debt and devaluing their currency. Alternate currencies are popping up everywhere. The US dollar has slid about 30% against the Canadian Dollar over the last few years as US debt grew … and the Canadian dollar is pretty much tied to the US dollar due to trade. China is selling US dollars and moving to currency trade with Russia. The holding by the Chinese of US dollars peaked last year and has been dropping. Japan has reduced its corporate taxes so now the US has the highest corporate taxes in the world according to some sources.
Australia and New Zealand have similar issues. In a couple of years, it is unlikely that Green House Gases will be front page news when unemployment is 20% and people are having trouble putting food on the table. There will be people on the streets telling our politicians that it is time for them to leave office just like people have been doing in the Middle East. In fact, in cold snowy Alberta, both the Premier of the province and the leader of the opposition have announced retirement plans for this year. The public is speaking both demonstrably and quietly all around the world. The bureaucrats should pay attention. The world as we knew it is changing as we sit here typing.

On 12 September 2002 the BOM became a prescribed agency under the Financial Management and Accountability Act. Under the Public Service Act, the Director of Meteorology has the powers and responsibilities of an agency head, and under current administrative arrangements reports to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities i.e. The Hon. Tony Burke MP Australian Labor Party.
So the BOM answers to government and relies for its funding from government. Hence would you think that it tells government what it wants to hear? – Just a tiny little bit perhaps?
There is a saying in Canberra, never hold an enquiry unless you know what the results are going to be. Any “independent” audit of BOM would only therefore be with some-one like Tim Flannery being in charge of a carbon tax or Dracula let loose in the blood bank.

‘Celebrity’ flash:
Lord Oxburgh and Muir Russell, both famous for their ‘independent enquiries’ into the Climategate antics at the University of East Anglia, were spotted this morning at London Heathrow T5 flying together to Australia.
This reporter noticed that they were stopped at Security and several tins of white paint were removed from their hand luggage. ‘But its a tool of my my trade and livelihood’ shouted a clearly irritated peer as they did not fit inside the little plastic bag. ‘My work in in Ashes’ squealed Russell.
The aircraft is expected to arrive in The Colonies (Sydney) tomorrow. Where, no doubt, the dynamic duo will get a rousing Oz welcome from all right-thinking sceptics.
Message ends.

Full marks to Ken Stewart and the battlers who are requesting the enquiry. While the Westminster Model purrs along nicely on rank, titles, privelege and custom in its native climate and has very large tanks to store the required whitewash, the Aussie climate and character can be pretty tough on imported models. I used the word ‘battler’ advisedly as New Zealand comes from similar hardy roots; the Westminster Model had to be modified significantly before it would even run in NZ (the upper house proved to be too top-heavy and was lopped off very early) and the the NZ Climate Coalition has been doing pretty well so far in the NZ courts of justice.
As a footnote, it amazes me how frequently old students of UEA pop up in key but far-flung places.

I’m sure you all know the truism “evil flourishes when good men do nothing”.
Rather than saying nothing can be done, fortunately many people make the effort.
I can assure other posters the Australian public is awakening out of it’s seeming apathy.
Whether successful or not, the herculean efforts of Jo and her associates will be further evidence to a frustrated public that they do have a voice and that people are fighting on their behalf to prevent these abuses taking place. All power to them !!

Christopher Hanley says:
February 16, 2011 at 12:44 am
Paul R 11:35 pm,
Ian McPhee is not former Liberal MP Ian Macphee.
Oops sorry, I muddled my Macphee’s, pretty badly too.

Charles Nelson says:
February 16, 2011 at 3:17 am
Tim ‘Ghost Metropolis’ Flannery, new job $180,000 per annum.
————————————————————————————–
Tim ‘Ghost Metropolis’ Flannery, new part time job $180,000 per annum.
There you go, fixed.

Anthony,
Do you feel you have more freedom and wealth than in the 60’s and 70’s?
Governments are definately not working for the people anymore. I feel more enslaved to be working for survival than getting ahead for retirement the way governments want to tax us even in death.
The future cannot sustain this pace of debt to the very rich and everyone else will be in debt to live.
So, were is the freedom?

Have these doctored data sets been included in the IPCC reports?

Anthony and Jo – a word of caution regarding NIWA. Last time I looked, the 7 and 11 station series were still prominent on NIWA’s website. The peer review by the BoM of the 7 station series is also available on NIWA’s website (the adjustments are plainly shown in the review, but there is no criticism of NIWA by the BoM). While there may be the ongoing court action, it has received little or no publicity in New Zealand, and NIWA appear to be just carrying on as always. They have simply hidden their wrongdoings in plain view. The NZ Minister for Climate Change (Nick Smith) is supportive of NIWA and their methods (I have corresponded with him). He represents the basket-weavers of Nelson, and claims to have been a true believer in AGW for 20 years or more.
In Oz, the matter will most likely be decided by public opinion and the vote. The Coalition (opposition) are already ahead in the polls (c. 54 to 46). Gillard and Labor are doomed if she introduces a “carbon tax”, having campaigned on a pledge of no such tax. My guess is that the Greens have overplayed their hand, and that their price for support in both houses was the introduction of a “carbon tax”. While the leader of the Greens is a wily old fox, the newly elected Green senators are young zealots, and I suspect will not understand how or when to back down. The well-publicised claims by the usual suspects that Queensland flooding was caused by AGW (after a decade of claiming that drought was caused by AGW) have not gone down well with Joe Public. I suspect Tim Flannery will have a similar effect once he is let loose.
All the best.

REPLY: Oh please, peer reviewed publications are not the pinnacle of truth. I (or anyone else) could write up a paper that would make it through peer review that could be totally wrong. It has happened lots of times. Peer review isn’t auditing, and it often doesn’t do much beyond have a conversation about the merits of the paper. Peer review is an unpaid profession. We get what we pay for.
I get so sick of people like you touting peer review as “truth”, when that peer review often doesn’t even bother with the job of replication. If the peer reviewers of Michael Mann’s paleo-trainwreck had bothered to do replication, climate science wouldn’t be so damaged today. In fact I doubt that Climate Audit or WUWT would even exist had such replication been done.
Pull your head out of your butt Mr. Adler, demand replication, demand the numbers add up. That’s what’s going on here. – Anthony
The paper I linked,
http://reg.bom.gov.au/amm/docs/2004/dellamarta.pdf
provides the rationale and details the methods by which the Australian Climate Record was processed to eliminate errors. It admits that some of the corrections are comparable in size to the real change in temperature. the people who did this work have excellent credentials as climate scientists and mathematicians:
http://www.giub.unibe.ch/~dmarta/
If the people calling for an audit are real scientists, they should be able to read the article and understand what was done. If they doubt the principles that are being used and have better ideas, they could explain what they are and why their ideas are better. From what I have read about this controversy, this hasn’t been done. I have read the blogposts complaining about the temperature adjustments, but have not seen any reference to the papers that were written about what was done and why.
It seems to me that the problem is that people are protesting because the resulting data doesn’t support their beliefs. Unable or unwilling to go to the trouble of understanding what was done, they are asking for an audit, while secretly hoping it doesn’t happen so they can say that they have an issue with the data that they don’t like.
Your complaints about the Hockey Stick paper are wrong. Most Paleo Climate reconstructions , that have been done, since the original Hockey Stick paper, still show a the existence of a Hockey Stick, even though the MWP shows up a more clearly in the subsequent papers. Some of the analysis is done using centered PCA, some of it is done without resorting to PCA at all. Some of it was done without the infamous tree rings. This shows that the criticisms of the original Hockey Stick paper by McIntyre et al were quite immaterial.
McIntyre’s complaint about non centered PCA was actually proven to be incorrect.
I am not sure that you want to continue discussing the Hockey Stick controversy here, so I have omit links which support my position. Debunking the criticisms of the Hockey Stick are like beating a dead horse.
REPLY: Yes, I’m glad you’ve finally comes to the realization that the hockey stick is garbage. You really do need to understand that science isn’t perfect, databases of numbers aren’t perfect, and the need for auditing pervades other fields of science for these reasons. Pharmacology and medicine for example are sometimes corrupted by monied interests just like Climatology which now has billions invested. Climatology should have no exception to procedural auditing. The best thing about his is that its going forward, and there’s nothing you can argue that will chnage that. Be as upset as you wish, condemn it all you want. Your opinion is of no consequence. – Anthony

What I like about the comments is the obvious number of Australians now visiting this site. In my daily conversations more people are questioning the whole carbon dioxide is a danger and I believe that more and more will come to do so. There will be a day of reckoning but not soon enough to prevent major economic damage.
Annei says:
February 16, 2011 at 4:02 am
I’m mystified by that map. Is the extreme SW of WA really rated as Subtropical? The last time I stayed there I was frozen; and that was in late November
Yes Annei I was also surprised by the map showing the south of WA to be subtropical. The prevailing winds would surely knock it out of that category.

Stephan says:
February 16, 2011 at 2:22 am
Unfortunately I agree with Borgelt Above
Unfortunately after living in Australia, I do not consider it to be a democracy where people have many rights. Most likely nothing will happen. What I mean is Government in Australia is way to big and powerful to a point where individual freedoms have been eroded to point that such a request as this one will get nowhere. In many ways its a politically correct dictatorship. Sorry…
——————————————————
You are overstating things a wee bit, methinks. We are far from perfect, but this is a functioning democracy. After the last election, a gaggle of independents, some Green, some not, held the balance of power. If they had thrown their lot in with the conservatives, they would be in exactly the same position.
I have had dealings with the Audit Office over many years. I assure you, they are completely straight and honest, which is one reason why they are chronically underfunded. They get hundreds of requests a year over and above what they are already committed to do. And, they are not an anti-corruption body – it is not in their remit.
While it would be great if they take up this request, if they don’t, it is not grounds for conspiracy theories. Probably a Parliamentary inquiry would be more appropriate anyway, given the political content of allegations against the BOM. The Senate could initiate this at any time – and the numbers are there to do it, until July.

@eadler

This shows that the criticisms of the original Hockey Stick paper by McIntyre et al were quite immaterial.

Immaterial?? Funny definition of ‘immaterial’ you are using.
They showed that an ‘iconic’ paper, used by the IPCC as its poster child, that effectively catapaulted an obscure student into a primary place in climatology, and that had passed the much-lauded peer-review, used a deeply flawed statistical method.
And that the results is claimed to have obtained were actually an artefact of the method, not the data. Any old numbers put into the method produced a hockey stick.
The conspirators then out every possible obstacle in McIntyre’s way to prevent their scientific and statistical failure from being made public. Interested readers can learn the whole sorry saga – complete with documented references – in ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’ by AW Montford. An excellent book – and a far better yarn than the dry subject matter would suggest.
Rather than being immaterial, McIntyre’s work showed that;
At least one climatologist failed to use the best aviailable statistical methids. Indeed a method that was so flawed as to be useless for his purpose.
Despite this fundamental flaw, the paper passed ‘peer-review’ and was published to great fanfare and acclaim.
Nobody in climatology subsequently noticed these flaws, until McIntyre tried to reproduce the results some years later
The authors refused to allow him access to their original data – contrary to the principles of openness and reproducibility that underpin good science.
I will be charitable and call their actions ‘misbehaviour’. And, along with many other factors, this misbehavior reinforced my sceptical views about climatology and climatologists.
True scientists with a solid experimental case and strong arguments would not need to behave in this shoddy way. And a good review process would have turfed the work out before publication..not ten years after it had polluted the science.
Far from being immaterial, McIntyre’s work revealed deep and fundamental problems with the ‘science’ of climatology. As a ‘science’, it stinks!

Just had a closer look at the map at the head of the article, apparently from Wikipedia. As a few PPs have commented, it is not consistent with the experience of those of us who live here. Is it meant to describe vegetation patterns (eg desert, grassland, tropical?) It doesn’t even work on that level – south western WA is not, by any stretch of the imagination, ‘sub-tropical’. The northern half of the NSW coast (described as temperate) probably is.
Perhaps Anthony just put it there to check if we are awake.

Alexander K says:
February 17, 2011 at 2:44 am
One of the truly great things about Anthony’s light touch on moderation gives most of us some real entertainment when posters such as EAdler’s attempt to justify the unjustfiable. ‘Adler’ is German for ‘eagle’, but for some reason I keep getting a mental picture of a turkey whenever I see his name above a post…
Alexander,
If people have factual or logical arguments to make, they don’t have to resort to insults to persuade reasonable people of that their position is correct.

Hot off the press!
Australia’s Chief Scientist, Penny Sackett, has resigned.
http://www.itwire.com/science-news/energy/45277-australias-first-chief-scientist-resigns

The New Zealand audit found nothing amiss.
The adjustments of temperature had been questioned by the skeptics who called for the audit. The reasons for the adjustments were endorsed by the auditors, who said that the original raw data was available to the public.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1012/S00050/niwa-releases-review-of-nz-temperature-trends.htm
At each of the seven locations there have been changes in specific climate station location over time. When you create a long time series by adding information from each of these station locations together, you have to make adjustments to account for these changes.
There have been various changes in location etc over time at each of the seven locations making up the seven station series. In order to create a long time series at each location, it is necessary to merge temperature records from a number of specific sites have been merged together to form a long time series. When merging different temperature records like this, it is necessary to adjust for climatic differences from place to place or significant biases would be introduced. Adjustments may also be needed even if the site does not physically move, because changes in exposure or instrumentation at a given site can also bias the temperature measurements.
Why do you need to adjust the raw data?
Long time series of climate data often have artificial discontinuities – caused, for example, by station relocations, changes in instrumentation, or changes in observing practice – which can distort, or even hide, the true climatic signal. Therefore, all climatic studies and data sets should be based on homogeneity-adjusted data.
That is what NIWA climatologists have done in the seven station series, and the seven individual station review documents outline the adjustments.
The raw (original) climate station data have not been changed and are freely available on the NIWA climate database, which means that the NIWA seven station series can be easily reproduced.

REPLY: Very soon, adjustments, like “snow”, will be a thing of the past. – Anthony