Things are changing with global sea level data reporting. As I mentioned in my post April 6th:
What’s delaying UC sea level data from being updated?
As you can see in the graph above, the data has not been updated since mid 2010. Normally an update would appear sometime in Feb 2011 based on their previous update schedules.
I had sent email queries, and they went unanswered. So I made a phone call. I got an answer, described here:
An answer to the question about why UC’s sea level data has not been updated since mid 2010
The answer from the chief researcher, Dr. R. Steven Nerem, was:
“We are updating our web page to a new design, and that is the reason for the delay.”
I replied with: “OK I understand, but the SL data hasn’t been updated since mid 2010, and people are asking questions about it.”
“Well we only update a couple times per year anyway. Sea level changes pretty slowly you know.”
I said: “Yes, but in looking at your previous release schedules, you would have been due for an update in February 2011, and that hasn’t happened. “
To which he replied:
“This new website design won’t work with our current format, so if you can just be patient and wait a couple of weeks we’ll have it online.”
During the same post, in comments, Peter Miller found what might be the “new” website and commented:
Anthony, here are the updated figures – you may be using a redundant site.
A little scary as you can see ‘this new improved version’ shows a greater rate of sea level rise than previously, but most important and ominously it is clearly obvious a whole heap of data points on the chart have been/changed/manipulated/strangled.
But why?
That website had some updated “look and feel” and an updated graph, which matched the presentation of the SL graph on the http://sealevel.colorado.edu website, but the data for the graph still ended in mid 2010 even though it had a 2011_rel1 stamp on it.
I figured: “OK, they are making a new website on another server, and they are going to switch it over and redirect the DNS pointer to the new server at some point. I didn’t even bother to make a screencap of the new website since I figured it would be updated soon.
In the meantime, WUWT and CA regular, stats guy RomanM got impatient and decided to find out for himself what the most recent data looked like. He was able to locate that JASON data and plot this ensemble. Note the slight downtrend in the last year.
While that in itself doesn’t prove anything, since we have had slight short downtrends before in the satellite SL data, it was interesting in that it appears this one has been going on a bit longer.
Today I got an email from a colleague wondering “what’s going on with sea level” and saying that he too was not getting any response from Dr. Nerem regarding his email inquiries. That prompted me to check http://crozon.colorado.edu/ again, and to my suprise, I found it “forbidden”, blocked at the server:
And the main website still isn’t updated: http://sealevel.colorado.edu
But they do have this message:
2011-04-25: We are currently making improvements to this site, and a new site and sea level estimate will be released shortly. Thanks for your patience.
So, we’ll watch with anticipation to see what the new website and data might look like.
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They’re giving it a Green (paint)job.
These people need to learn to communicate a bit.
Otherwise, we assume the worst.
A simple note on the front page would be enough:
“Sorry for the delay in updating data. We’re upgrading the website and can’t take the 20 minutes to add a single data point to this page. Please check back in the next few weeks for the new roll out.”
Saying nothing implies either incompetence or evil intentions.
REPLY: while I agree some better communications is needed, I don’t think “evil intentions” are afoot there’s a third option. “Our website isn’t a priority, our research is”. – Anthony
I hope that all the /data/ from previous versions of the sea level reports are archived somewhere. I like to see the numbers and from them make my own graphics, which are slightly unconventional, enabling me to spot possible change points.
The current procrastination looks somewhat contrived to me. Have they something unpalatable to disclose (or hide)?
Robin
The new website is likely getting some new mirrors installed and new smoke generator.
Maybe they have discovered a new torture method that makes the data tell the “truth”.
hide the decline … another “trick” / good scientific practice ?
charlatans and con men the lot of them …
REPLY: Let’s see what the new website says before passing judgment – Anthony
REPLY: while I agree some better communications is needed, I don’t think “evil intentions” are afoot there’s a third option. “Our website isn’t a priority, our research is”. – Anthony
I think you might be wrong, the better explanation is that they simply don’t care to publish anything that will potentially abuse their cause. I would hazzard to guess that they had this update going and have just kept it going longer then was necessary do to the “longer” trend in sea level data. So in essence it started off as simple incompetence with the upgrade…..and now they just hold it back until sea level starts going back on its track. Question of course is whether we are seeing a change or not, which in itself could mean something. More then likely, the data we have says otherwise, but we can not know that at this point.
Not that I believe this changes facts in the greater war so to speak, but I do think its important to realize that most of the scientists who research based on political whims such as AGW are not outright malicious…most of the time they just don’t want to give the wrong message and lose their pay from those who hold the purse-strings.
It wouldn’t make sense for them to release information and lose funding due to political reasons. In a way, I don’t blame them, these scientists did not make the rules of the way funding works from the US Gov., so they are simply put the best scientists who know how to please the ruling politicians at the time. So in essence, its like I said…not malicious, but it is a political ploy and if you look at the actual consequences of this happening at every university across the country, our scientists have ceased to become scientists in every classic definition of the word and are most simply just lap-dogs for politicians who tell the beauracrats and politicians what they want to hear and let others tell them the bad news if they are even ever told the bad news.
That might be a generalization, but the good scientists have taken on real work and left the universities behind. It might be a sad truth. but real science is dying everywhere except from volunteers and scientists who spend their own blood, money, sweat and tears to figure out the truth.
If evidence exists that disproves or contradicts even small parts of a certain crusade, you can be sure that the scientists in charge of it will make sure that they are not the messengers who bring bad news. It does not say there is a conspiracy, but I do believe vboring might be correct on this issue for the most part.
Perhaps evil intentsions is not the term to use here…but regardless the person who is generally shot is the messenger who brings the bad news. Just goes to show…these scientists are smart in that sense that they realize this and don’t want to lose their funding (which I would put on par with being shot as they see it.)
crosspatch says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:14 am
Maybe they have discovered a new torture method that makes the data tell the “truth”.
=============================================
lol, waterboarding data.
Looks like the climate science geniuses can’t figure out to pay a 20-something like maybe 50 bucks an hour to straighten out their site in a week. Fishy.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
vboring says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:07 am
These people need to learn to communicate a bit.
…
REPLY: while I agree some better communications is needed, I don’t think “evil intentions” are afoot there’s a third option. “Our website isn’t a priority, our research is”. – Anthony
###
I can sympathies. As someone who has sometimes needed to maintain a website as part of my duties, I found it a big PITA and disruptive of my main activities; much worse the my weekly status reports. But these days there are so many tools and software packages to help. BTW isn’t this what interns are for?
OTH, I can’t help but wonder if the priority is not somehow related to how well it supports the “narrative”.
Last May, the Heritage Foundation sponsored an international Climate Conference for actual scientists, aka skeptics. There was a sea level expert there, a man who actually measures sea levels. He told us that sea level rise is not uniform. That amazed me, but while Venice is sinking the Pitcairn Islands are rising with respect to tidal levels.
Tuvalu, with the famous pictures of an underwater meeting held with snorkels, is rising.
I think more should be made of this amazing fact.
And massaged data should be called out big time.
So a couple of weeks have passed. Where is it?
Obviously the data does not fit the narative so it doesn’t get updated. Argo data, which shows stable ocean heat contant is hard to find. Pielke points out just today that water vapor data that shows declines in humidity even though the atmosphere warmed a bit is hard to come by. Now sea level refuses to support model projections. What would it take for someone in the concensus climate science community to realize they are a scientist first and advocacy is a distant second?
If the ocean temperature is not warming, then thermal expansion will be reduced. Just like the CU chart shows.
googled site:crozon.colorado.edu
The results include hundreds of pages that will not open. Google has caches of the pages.
The image search yields three images. This one is intersting: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://sealevel.colorado.edu/jason_tgcal_2010_rel4.jpg&imgrefurl=http://crozon.colorado.edu/share/4/3087&usg=__Xqy-92Js_x9GpztQK2l7npi_PDI=&h=425&w=610&sz=53&hl=en&start=0&sig2=L7NiA8Do5GrU4V-kGSTeNA&zoom=1&tbnid=_B7k2ZkRW7fbYM:&tbnh=125&tbnw=180&ei=76W1TYfpApSCtgfCgvjpDg&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsite:crozon.colorado.edu%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN%26rlz%3D1T4ADSA_enUS417US417%26biw%3D1643%26bih%3D867%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=328&page=1&ndsp=3&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0&tx=109&ty=67
I assume that link will work. I hope it will open a Google cache of the image.
I don’t think at this stage these people can or should be given the benefit of the doubt as time and time again they have proven to be fraudsters (re Hockey Stick, most temp adjustments etc).FGS its over…
Let’s see the data hasn’t been updated since the middle of 2010. Just speculating but that might be about the time that the grad student or even undergraduate who was taking care of this website might have left the school. So they trundle along only to discover late in the game that no one could decipher how to update the current page.
Or option 2, the new page keeper had grand ideas for great improvements that ran in to the all to frequent, unexpected glitches.
Hey! Give the guys a break. After all, they really have to scramble for their bucks. It’s kind-of like there are three meal tickets available, and there are six people competing for them. Here’s an article that outlines the problems our PhD friends are having.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/04/the-phd-problem-what-do-you-do-with-too-many-doctorates.ars
h/t Instapundit
Anyone care to bet that when, if ever, Nerem sees fit to publish UC’s precious-few updated sea-level measurements, they will prove to be “adjustments” rather than raw inputs?
Why, in any case, should public monies fund research amenable to indefinite sequestration by a bunch of frothing academic ideologues? From 1988, if not from 1999 et seq., this pattern has become entirely familiar. Who does Nerem think he’s kidding?
I think a little intellectual tension is good for the system. Nothing at ALL wrong with ensuring that researchers are aware that people are interested in their work.
Trust, but verify…. Thanks, Anthony, Roman et al…. Fascinating stuff.
They have already done that at least once with release 5, 2005 after 28 November 2005. It contains data from 5 December 1992 up to 9 August 2005. If you pay careful attention you will notice they have changed data retrospectively for this period in subsequent releases including the last one on 15 December 2010 to the effect trend was increased from 2.9 mm/year to 3.4 mm/year for that early period. This is how they could maintain a roughly 3 mm/year rate for the entire satellite period up to last year, but because current rate was falling below 2 mm/year, that could not be done indefinitely. So they needed some more tweaking and it takes time. Anyway, do a
$ wget -m http://sealevel.colorado.edu
while it is available.
Could it be that when compiling the new web page they reloaded the data from 1994 and couldn’t get the graph to show that upward trend line? The climate “scientists” have turned me into a cynic.
JKB says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:52 am
Let’s see the data hasn’t been updated since the middle of 2010. Just speculating but that might be about the time that the grad student or even undergraduate who was taking care of this website might have left the school. So they trundle along only to discover late in the game that no one could decipher how to update the current page.
That’s silly. Had they released original raw satellite data along with their code to transform it to the value-added product they have on the website, there would be tens of thousands of willing competent professionals out there who could do the update for free. Some may even venture as far as to do a complete audit for them.
Maybe they are consulting Hansen.
Back towards reality . The Dutch coast is protected by poles of wood hammered into the sand in double rows . This is a measure to keep the current away from the coast and to prevent heavy erosion of the sand in front of the coastline . What are we seeing right now ? At low tide the waterline is falling back so far away from the coast that it is becoming easy to walk around the wooden pole-rows without wetting your feet . This has not been possible for many years and is showing a lowering of the sea-level here , which is of course an embarresment to all believers in warmist theories . With the us government it could well be that all scientists employed by mr. obama are so scared of loosing their jobs that it is better for their own health to manipulate reality ……