This quote from ETH Zurich is actually from another just published post, but it is so grating, so anti-science, that it deserves its very own thread to highlight it.
Here it is:
If the model data is corrected downwards, as suggested by the ETH researchers, and the measurement data is corrected upwards, as suggested by the British and Canadian researchers, then the model and actual observations are very similar.
Gosh.
This is like saying:
If we take all our economic projections for performance as suggested by our financial models, and correct it downwards, and at the same time, if we take all of our revenues and expenditures that are in the red, and adjust them upwards, out company will be on track and our investors will be satisfied.
Except, people go to jail for that sort of thing.
This is the most perverted use of the word “corrected” I have EVER seen. Just stunning…
Give them enough rope.
Sure seems to apply to this deviant branch of social studies.
I would blame full scale panic.
I am speechless.
Also, if the models must be corrected downwards then wouldn’t the underlying concept of the models – CO2 warming – need to also be corrected downwards?
Wouldn’t that make the CO2 effect even less of a concern?
A bit of context…
The “downward correction” is to account for the predominance of La Nina over recent years.
The “upward correction” is to account for bias due to lack of arctic temperature stations.
Unreasonable?
If my bank would correct my outstanding loan amount downwards, and correct my savings account balance upwards, I’ll be in great shape.
So basically, if we make sh*t up to match what we think is the “right answer”, then we can finally demonstrate that our answer is right!
Or, to rephrase again,
Clearly the models are wrong, so we have to adjust those, but REALITY is ALSO WRONG, so we have to adjust reality as well, and then our results will look AWESOME!
If that pitch had been 1 foot higher and 8 inches to the right, it would have been a strike, so “YERRR OUT!”.
It would be amusing if it wasn’t so dangerous, so insanely – in an Orwellian sense – anti science and anti human.
They have already been “correcting” the measured data… recent data gets corrected upwards by a bunch, and older data gets corrected downwards by a bunch, and they still haven’t been able to make reality match their models!
I hope that the next LIA comes during the lifetime of most of these morons… living through it myself would almost be worth it to see what happens to these “scholars”.
“Except, people go to jail for that sort of thing.”
Not if they are Chairing a Central Bank they don’t.
Guess I have to join in, too.
If I correct my height upwards, and my weight downwards, enough, well, blow me down, a BMI to content the medics.
So that’s all right then.
Auto
Those that can not believe that they have made mistakes, are destined to repeat them. This is an example. They have been “correcting” global average temperatures upward while “adjusting” CO2 sensitivity downward.
JohnB says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:28 am
A bit of context…
The “downward correction” is to account for the predominance of La Nina over recent years.
The “upward correction” is to account for bias due to lack of arctic temperature stations.
Unreasonable?
—
Yes it is unreasonable and totally wrong. It is not a “correction” since that would require that you actually know the “correct” value of the parameter in question. “Adjustment” would be a better term for this type of ad hoc “science”…
Hence:
2 + 2 = 5
(For small values of 5 and large values of 2.)
I played a game of half court basketball with a buddy yesterday. At the end of the game, I adjusted his score downwards and my score upwards and I won!
JohnB says:
The “downward correction” is to account for the predominance of La Nina over recent years.
The “upward correction” is to account for bias due to lack of arctic temperature stations.
Unreasonable?
—
Yes, it is unreasonable. If you have a lack of arctic stations, you don’t assume what the temperature would have been. For all you know, actual arctic temperatures are colder than assumed.
Isn’t moving the measured data upwards an implicit “hide the decline” moment?
More evidence that you can’t fix stupid.
Goose meet gander department: If the model data is corrected upwards and the measurement data is corrected downwards then the model and actual observations will be even further apart than they are and thus put this sorry hoax out of its misery even faster!
Seemed to sum it up
How many Client Scientists does it take to change a light bulb? 6.
1 to input model parameters and values to determine the wattage needed for the desired brightness of the room.
1 to obtain and screw in the bulb.
1 to measure the actual brightness obtained.
1 to adjust the model parameters upward to more closely match actual brightness.
1 to provide sunglasses to adjust apparent brightness downward to more closely match modeled brightness.
1 to declare the project a glowing success.
Quote of the week ?
More like “Quote of the Year” and possibly “Quote of the Decade” !
It illustrates the whole schemozzle beautifully.
JohnB says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:28 am
Very. To start with you need to include an “upward correction” for the predominance of El Ni&ntides;os in the years before the PDO flipped negative.
Either of those “correction” provides tacit support to the inconvenient truth that “natural variability” is as big a factor as CO2, but the warmista will try to sweep that under the rug. Actually, those “corrections” are how the warmista try to sweep that under the rug and discourage attempts to identify, describe, and quantify that natural variability.
Sorry, this is just cr4p isn’t it?
This is spooky – those guys are writing science fiction and trying to pass it off as real.
This is nothing new in the climate obsessed set of behaviors.
The Climategate leaks showed the same sort of corrupt thinking, that in a regulated financial setting would send people to jail.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas.
JohnB says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:28 am
A bit of context…
The “downward correction” is to account for the predominance of La Nina over recent years.
The “upward correction” is to account for bias due to lack of arctic temperature stations.
Unreasonable?
Yes. Completely. Unequivocally. Totally. Absolutely.
Wouldn’t “correcting model data” be both an admission the model is wrong, and creating a NEW model?
grumpyoldmanuk says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:36 am
“‘Except, people go to jail for that sort of thing.’
Not if they are Chairing a Central Bank they don’t.”
…or if they are directors in Goldman Sachs’. Then they get sent to Canada as US Ambassador to lecture Canadians about letting markets manage greenhouse gases.
It’s obvious that we are not super-sophisticated enough to understand this this climate science and I’m super cereal! (Is Tom Steyer becoming the new ManBearPig?)
This is clinical insanity. As in, having lost touch with anything real, and being sure you can change it by just thinking about it and wishing it otherwise. It’s magical thought.
If you torture the data long and hard enough, you can make it confess to anything.
Shouldn’t it be “if we correct it again”
I thought they have already done that a couple of times
Sooner or later it will work, just keep correcting, the more correcting they do the longer they can get funding!
Just admit the models are wrong, “correct” them so the outputs match reality and we might be able to have a rational discussion.
philjourdan says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:33 am
They need to correct more than their “data”. The models themselves are all wrong.
Expect the next IPCC report to conclude with 99.99% confidence that that CACA is much worse than thought, while at the same time reducing ECS to 1.5 to 3.5 degrees C from 1.5 to 4.5, continuing the ever more realistic trend. Eventually they might get totally real, ie 0.0 to 1.5.
More science!
“From satellite data, for example, scientists know that the Arctic region in particular has become warmer over the past years, but because there are no weather stations in that area, there are measurements that show strong upward fluctuations. As a result, the specified average temperature is too low.”
Barrow Alaska weather station…
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/met/brw_met_english.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrow,_Alaska
Barrow … is the largest city of the North Slope Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska and is located above the Arctic Circle.
Weather history for Barrow, AK.
http://weather-warehouse.com/WeatherHistory/PastWeatherData_BarrowWPostWRogersArpt_Barrow_AK_January.html
Bingo, except that journalists don’t go to jail. They write about those who do go to jail. And as a matter of fact, a lot of Swiss should be in jail for cheating taxpayers around the world with numbered accounts for dictators and others.
Model data? Numbers coming from those models are predictions, not data.
milodonharlani says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:56 am
Frank K. says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:49 am
Map of Arctic stations doesn’t include wandering “North Pole” recorder, nor frequent observations from subs surfacing at the Pole:
http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
(Accidentally posted in another thread.)
milodonharlani says:
August 19, 2014 at 11:00 am
Correct – and I’m sure there is quite a bit more historical temperature data above the arctic circle. What baffles me is why mainstream climate researchers would make such a patently false statement then propose a “correction” based on the false premise.
Frank K. says:
August 19, 2014 at 11:15 am
Because it’s yet another way of falsely cooking the GASTA books.
This was published in a “peer reviewed” journal. Says a lot about the peers, doesn’t it! I won’t even comment on the integrity of the editors.
This is a little off topic, but seeing as we’re discussing the absurdity of climate alarm-ism, I thought that the August monthly numbers as reported by weather.com is quite funny. This is for Baltimore MD, zip code 21230. It says the highest temp so far in August is 87 and the is 88. Bu their little graph shows that 87 is now warmer then 88!!! Just scroll down the page.
Also, Baltimore hasn’t had a 90+ degree day since July 27th. If we make it through August with out a 90+ degree day, we’ll break a record from 1984! Plus it will be only the 4th August since records were kept that we would have no 90+ degree days in the month of August! The other were in the 1930’s I believe and the late 1800’s!!
JohnB says:
A bit of context…
The “downward correction” is to account for the predominance of La Nina over recent years.
The “upward correction” is to account for bias due to lack of arctic temperature stations.
Unreasonable?
John, John, John… We can’t adjust the models. They are based on sacrosanct laws of physics. To adjust them would be to “deny the science”. Surely you don’t want to be called a denier.
As for the temperature data, it has been adjusted enought already (way more than enough actually). So here’s what we do: Throw out the adjusted temperature data and use the satellite temperature data instead. Compare that to the unadjusted model outputs and see what you get.
Report back to us to let us know how that works out.
Why, when climate – arctic climate especially – has become a matter of life or death to the entire human race, have so many arctic weather stations been shut down? (Rhetorical question.)
graphicconception says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:44 am
Exactly. In other words, 2 + 2 = 5 if the climate alarmist scientists say it does because they can adjust one of the 2s by an increment of 1 if desired to make the statement true. Got it.
Orwell’s Ministry of Truth from his 1984 novel is alive and well today in 2014.
John B says the downward correction is for the predominance of La Niña during the “Pause”.
Are you taking into account the predominance of El Niño during the warming period of 1975 – 1998?
I thought not.
Each explanation for the hiatus that invokes a “natural” phenomenon downward limits the radiative forcing power of CO2 (including feedbacks).
CAGW requires a potential very high, all-inclusive radiative forcing for CO2. Each explanation for the hiatus pulls us away from the high-end potential.
It amazes me that the press does not wonder why the top-end and bottom-end of projected temperature rise by 2100 by the IPCC aren’t coming closer together each year. Billions of dollars of research and modeling work is not bringing us – officially – closer to a hard conclusion. If climate science is an actual science, it should narrow the certainty numerically as well as emotionally. Clearly, it is not.
What is 6 times 9? Answer 42. Douglas Adams prescient again.
This set me wondering…
Has anyone ever taken one of these great models, set the CO2 sensitivity to zero and run the model to see how well it hindcasts the observed temperatures?
I have an idea it might be quite close.
I build models for a living, albeit financial models. When our model predictions deviate from the actuals, we consider the model broken. It is tempting to simply keep adjusting the model to force-fit it. But in the finance world, no one would believe that the model was in any way predictive if we did that. The whole point of the model is to predict that if x goes up 3 points, y will go up 2 points. If y goes down 3 points, then the model is faulty, QED.
The Modelers Hippocratic Oath created by Wilmot states as a precept, “I will remember that I didn’t make the world and it does not satisfy my equations.”
How anyone who works with models could argue that the model is predictive when its forecasts deviate from the actual numbers is stunning. It defies the very definition of a working model. It is like a stove that does not actually generate heat. Not much of a stove no matter how you try to spin it.
Am I going mad, or has the world stopped making sense?
Mike Smith @ 12:02
Heretic.
Reminds me of this old joke:
“So this man wants a new suit, and he goes to a tailor. The tailor puts him up on the platform surrounded by all those mirrors, takes his measurements, and says “OK, come beck in a veek, I’ll heve de suit ready.”
In a week the man returns to the tailor shop. “Here’s your suit,” says the tailor.
“Well, I’d like to try it on,” says the customer. So he goes in the dressing room, takes his clothes off, and starts putting on the suit. It’s all but impossible to get into the thing! Finally, he has it on, comes out, and gets up on the platform again.
He looks at himself, frowns, and says to the tailor, “This suit is terrible! Look at this! The jacket sleeves are so long they’re flopping! But the shoulders are so narrow I can’t even breathe! The pants legs are baggy! But at the same time, the pants squeeze my hips!” On and on he complains.
“Vait a minute,” says the tailor, interrupting him. “Here’s vut you’ll do. You’ll go like dis…” And the tailor shows him how to hold in his sleeves, hunch up his shoulders, tuck in the baggy pants with one hand, all at the same time, to “make it fit”.
A few minutes later the man emerges from the shop onto the street. He’s hobbling down the sidewalk, trying to walk while still holding his sleeve, hunching his shoulders, tucking the pants, etc, etc.
Two old ladies waiting for a bus across the street notice him as he struggles along.
“Oy!” says one of the ladies, shaking her head in pity. “Look at that poor man!”
“Yes,” says her companion, also shaking her head. “But doesn’t his suit fit nice!”
What is all the fuss about? Isn’t this what the hockey team has been doing for years?
Model output is NOT data. End of story
Charlie Hendrix has it right. But I might be persuaded to call the model results “imaginary,” since all modeling is an imaginary process.
“Says a lot about the peers, doesn’t it! .”
Did anyone not pee in it?
I guess it all rides on the definition of “corrected.” Leif et el are getting big props here for correcting their methods/data, so what’s the big deal? It might be as equally legit.
I have told my wife that if we adjust or “correct” down the medically recommended weight for her size and if we then “correct” the actual readings of the Scales then despite her ar$e being the size of a small country, the desired weight and our ‘actual observations are very similar’.
Any comments as quick as possible as I fear I may not live long…………..
Sounds like Tamino! If we take out the things that caused cooling, we can see that it actually warmed. 🙂
The way this is done in practice is that a version of Mannian Regularization EM infills another +1 into the left side input data for the calculation.
pyeatte says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:23 am
This is spooky – those guys are writing science fiction and trying to pass it off as real.
*
I write science fiction – and I’d never try something as stupid at that in a plot. So these guys are an insult to science AND to science fiction.
… and simply more compelling evidence that Climate Science is in an Epic Crisis.
– “Shaka, when the Walls Fell.”
So what? CO2 is supposed to be a well mixed gas and its concentration is increasing globally. Its greenhouse effect should be noted everywhere on Earth, not only in a convenient place where there are not weather stations.
Besides, how does CO2 warm the Arctic? What radiation does it absorb? The sun does not shine in the Arctic for half of the year and receives little radiation on the other half. My guess is the increase of temperatures due to the so called greenhouse effect should be minimum at the poles.
Why don’t we make, say, an annual ritual Correction Of The Temperature day, in which we correct the scales of all thermometers to fit the climate model output. This way we would have correct models, and enjoyable climate alarmism, with all the profits one makes from that, without harming anyone. We could continue to scare our children; drive our SUV’s and feel bad about it, and drink FairTrade cale smoothies to compensate our guilt.
Whatever we need to prove we are right and you are wrong we can find it in the ‘correctional bin.’ Adjustments to suit our policy. We can make lies, ‘truth.’
urederra says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:22 pm
“Besides, how does CO2 warm the Arctic? What radiation does it absorb? The sun does not shine in the Arctic for half of the year and receives little radiation on the other half. My guess is the increase of temperatures due to the so called greenhouse effect should be minimum at the poles.”
CO2 has its absorption bands centered at color temperatures of 200K and 600K; so it absorbs very well the IR radiation emitted by a blackbody with a temperature of -73 deg C. And of a furnace at 330 deg C.
So maybe it could have some effect at the poles; where they are very, very cold. Making them a tiny bit less cold.
Rule one of climate ‘science’ is after all , if reality and models differ in value its reality which is in error.
So this idea is just normal practice in this area , where facts come a very poor second to how ‘useful’ the message is.
Here’s an amusing quote in that vein:
The consensus way is to average.
I thought the “proof” of the scientific method was to predict results before they occurred. This study only predicts the past.
This is the same absurd reasoning that has been prolific in ‘climate science’ for at least the last 8 or 10 years… probably much longer. I’m just a poor old North Carolina (hillbilly) engineer but statements like this (mostly on the ‘RealClimate’ website) were what caused me to download the Vostok ice core data and do my own analysis. That led me to the ‘dark side’ (i.e., Steve McIntyre’s ‘Climate Audit’, Anthony’s ‘Whats Up With That’, etc.). Thank the lord there are still a few rational people out there. The King’s obvious lack of clothing is finally starting to get a bit embarrassing, even for the media, and draw a crowd.
“If the model data is corrected downwards…”
Gosh, I learn something new every day!
Yesterday, I wasn’t aware that computer games produced data.
“Yesterday, I wasn’t aware that computer games produced data.”
Of course they do, how else could they keep tract of your progress in the game.
More seriously, there is a qualitative difference between information and data. Take a random number generator, get a lot of numbers from it and dump them to a file and you have data. It isn’t useful for anything, so you couldn’t call it information, but it’s still data.
It would seem that in CAGW Climate Science the scientific method involves changing …er… adjusting both reality and virtual reality every decade or so to match the cause of an imagined reality.
Sort of like rebooting your computer and pretending the virus is gone.
milodonharlani says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:45 am
philjourdan says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:33 am
They need to correct more than their “data”. The models themselves are all wrong.
Expect the next IPCC report to conclude with 99.99% confidence that that CACA is much worse than thought,
——————————————————————————————————————-
Agree; the CACA is already knee deep. I’ll need hipwaders if it gets any worse.
MattS says:
August 19, 2014 at 2:12 pm
“More seriously, there is a qualitative difference between information and data. Take a random number generator, get a lot of numbers from it and dump them to a file and you have data. It isn’t useful for anything, so you couldn’t call it information, but it’s still data.”
Tsk. Assuming your random number generator generates true random numbers – not pseudo random numbers – the data it generates are not only of maximum entropy, therefore of maximum information density (assuming they are white noise here) – but they are also extremely useful; as you can use the sequence generated as a one time pad for perfect, unbreakable encryption. The only complication is bringing a copy of the one time pad to the recipient in a safe manner. If you manage that, you’re set (for as long as the transmitted information does not exceed the length of the one time pad – you transmit it bitwise by XORing it with the bits in the one time pad).
I have read many articles at WUWT and comments by posters and frankly, this is the first time I heard about color temperatures when referred to absorption bands and greenhouse effect, I am more familiar with wave lenghts, but anyway, I’ll bite.
-73 celsius is, as you said, very, very cold, just 5 degrees less and CO2 will precipitate as a white solid. So, if it ever those temperatures are reached, it will be during the winter, as in no sun in the horizont. So, where is the radiation coming from?
Besides, as per Steig et al Nature paper (2009) Only the peninsula in the Antarctic is warming. But Steve McIntyre discovered that the reason of the warming on the peninsula was that the temperature records of the station called Harry were messed up. Mistake that nor Steig et al, neither Nature’s reviewers couldn’t catch. So, the question still remains, why only the arctic?
And, like others already pointed out, if it is only the Arctic what is warming, then is not global, and if the models have to be corrected downwards then the warming is not catastrophic, which is the position many skeptics are holding.
urederra says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:22 pm
“The sun does not shine in the Arctic for half of the year and receives little radiation on the other half.”
Actually the high latitudes receive quite a lot of incoming solar radiation (aka insolation) during their high sun season. Near the Equator the daylight (~12 hours) is approximately the same year round while near the Poles it approaches 24 hours during the high sun season. The results are surprising to most folks when first looking at the numbers. Try this site (figures 2 & 3) for a start:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6i.html
I think what they meant is model results, not “model data”.
The slip is endemic to climate science debate; climate data used interchanably with Climate model ouput is a core fault. The notion that model experiments are the same as data is delusional. A model cannot prove itself, though in the Orwellian science debate, apparently they can.
Model results have to be proven by comparing the results with empirical data or another model known to be accurate. Here is the problem, the models do not give reasonable projections of temperature. You can’t prove against an accepted model because it does not exist. More telling is the empirical data so far proves the models wrong. Sure you can shake the widget. vibrate the sprocket and get the data to come in line with existing emprical data, but that ain’t projecting anymore, is it. Anyone with integrity would admit they were wrong, and then go back to the drawing board, not state they were right but just missed a few things. The climate scienc eequivlent of “the operation was a success but the patient died”.
The only thing proven is that climate scientists are incapable of projecting future temperatures never mind proving manmade CO2 is a global crisis of unimaginable proportion and cost.
There are some people that really should have not been given a computer – “To err is human to really foul-up you need a computer.”
If the model data is corrected upwards, as suggested by the BULL researchers, and the measurement data is corrected downwards, as suggested by the DUST researchers, then the model and actual observations are even further apart!
JohnB says:
Yes. Ad hoc bullshit.
From people who have chin straps spanning their buttocks.
Yes, they are absolutely correct. Here is the math for it.
2+2=5 … you just have to correct it a bit.
Eamon.
urederra says:
August 19, 2014 at 3:14 pm
“I have read many articles at WUWT and comments by posters and frankly, this is the first time I heard about color temperatures when referred to absorption bands and greenhouse effect, I am more familiar with wave lenghts, but anyway, I’ll bite.”
See Wien’s displacement law.
“-73 celsius is, as you said, very, very cold, just 5 degrees less and CO2 will precipitate as a white solid. So, if it ever those temperatures are reached, it will be during the winter, as in no sun in the horizont. So, where is the radiation coming from?”
It won’t precipitate due to the low partial pressure. The radiation is of course the infrared radiation emitted by the (icy) surface. As the energy emitted rises with the 4th power of absolute temperature (Stefan-Boltzmann law), blackbody radiation from a blackbody at 200 K is about 5 times weaker (in Watt/area) than from a blackbody at 300 K (which would be roughly room temperature, well, a warm room, at 27 deg C.).
In the dark of winter at the poles, the air being delivered from the tropics (containing CO2) is warmer than the ice at the surface (which is radiating to space). The CO2 that collides with N2 and O2 will radiate at the temperature of the air. That radiation gos both toward the surface and toward space. The radiation from the CO2 at the top of the atmosphere will go mostly to space because the CO2 below it will absorb and re-emit in both directions. That which is able to reach the surface is re-emitted upwards and the surface stays colder than the air above it. In the winter there is very little water vapor in the atmosphere at the poles to complecate these processes.
urederra says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:22 pm
My comment was with regard to the fact that these researchers claimed there were no weather stations in the arctic, which is certainly not true. It’s even more absurd when you think of just the past 20 years (the approximate duration of “the pause”). Do these people really think no one has monitored temperatures anywhere above the arctic circle?? Really???
Of course we could say the same thing about the oceans. Until recently, there were no “permanent” weather monitoring stations (like the Argo buoys) over vast areas of the oceans – just ships passing transiently in the main sea routes taking approximate temperature readings. Yet somehow, we can claim to know the evolution of ocean temperatures over the past century…
At this point in the CAGW scam, why do they even consider changing the numbers? Since they stopped doing actual science years ago, why don’t they just go straight to the desired outcome? “If we just assume that what we imagine matches what really happens, we can confirm our conclusions and justify our grant money.”
Balancing the mental budget is never easy.
One has to raise his delusions and lower his integrity then everything wrong can be right.
Some day, the forensic auditors will be analyzing the temperature adjustments and everyone currently working at the NCDC will have to face the music of a ruined reputation for all time.
I’m just saying, someday there will be a Republican President and a Republican Senate and House and the game will be over.
If I just adjust a few of my lotto picks and then adjust a few of the numbers drawn… I’ll take my winnings in a lump sum please.
The cult has now entered the bargaining stage, after their initial stages of denial and then anger. Next comes depressing and then acceptance. Yet if a massive and youthful backlash kicks in, their acceptance stage will be painful too, and the whole intellectual/academic left wing of politics may go down with them.
I wonder if these esteemed scientists are on a grant or other government stipend to create this wonderful conclusion.
Where are the so-called academics who should be calling out this stuff what it is: anti-intellectual witch doctoring?
Academics are quick to claim the right to manage their own affairs through “peer review” and other generally accepted mechanisms. However, academics have plainly failed to demonstrate the backbone required to manage this ridiculous situation (CAGW).
Let me see if I have this about right. (I apologize in advance for readers who are not familiar with baseball.) Suppose someone predicted that between 2009 and 2014, the number of home runs would increase by 6%. This would be analogous to MET predictions that half of the six years past 2009 would break the 1998 record. Things were not looking good, so Hadcrut4 was invented. This could be analogous to moving the pitcher 10 feet further back from the batter. Things still did not look good, so further adjustments were made to Hadcrut4. See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/12/met-office-hadley-centre-and-climatic-research-unit-hadcrut4-and-crutem4-temperature-data-sets-adjustedcorrectedupdated-can-you-guess-the-impact/
This might be compared to moving the pitcher another 10 feet further away.
Things still did not look good, so Cowtan and Way tried to come to the rescue. This might be compared to moving the pitcher still another 10 feet further away.
Of course, when the predictions were made, they only had Hadcrut3 and they knew its shortcomings. Hadcrut3 still has not broken the 1998 record and it still has not come out for June. I hope they are not trying to hide some sort of a decline.
The article says:
“the Arctic region in particular has become warmer over the past years”.
RSS goes to 82.5 degrees north
With the circumference of Earth being about 40000 km, the distance from 82.5 to 90 would be 7.5/90 x 10000 = 830 km. So the area in the north NOT covered is pir^2 = 2.16 x 10^6 km2. Dividing this by the area of the earth, 5.1 x 10^8 km2, we get about 0.42% NOT covered by RSS in the Arctic. So are they suggesting that this very small area has increased its very low winter temperatures by an amount large enough to warrant spending billions of dollars to prevent this from happening?
Bill Illis says:
August 19, 2014 at 5:29 pm
Amen! And we can start this fall in November to remove the out-of-control, left wing, progressives that plague our government. Sadly, zero funding the CAGW climate “research” machine will be a longer term project.
“If we take all our economic projections for performance as suggested by our financial models, and correct it downwards, and at the same time, if we take all of our revenues and expenditures that are in the red, and adjust them upwards, out company will be on track and our investors will be satisfied.”
That is word for word what John Perkins did for a living before he rebelled in disgust and blew the lid off with, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” and its sequel of confessions from other participating enablers.
The goal in those days was to induce poor and emerging countries into borrowing vast sums they would not be able to pay back with the inducement, “Build it and they will come.” Philippine and Indonesia were especially targeted. The same con is now being orchestrated on a vast scale to try to prevent the development of economic challenges from non-Western countries. The inducement is ‘green jobs’ and all that.
Well, it’s working well for Spain, isn’t it?
Translation: The “pause” suggests that our observations have always been wrong. And that our models have always been wrong.
Or, as any sane person would conclude, the “science” of CAGW is not just “not settled”…it’s always been wrong.
Hey, you can’t argue with this…it wasn’t written by Skeptics, and…it’s Peer-Reviewed!
What a great idea!!! Pure genius!!
Frank K. says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:58 am
Thank you for that graphic. Can you tell me over what timeframe that 9999.00 inches of rainfall occurred? 😉
@Lee,
“Can you tell me over what timeframe that 9999.00 inches of rainfall occurred?”
40 days and 40 nights.
curioti says:
August 19, 2014 at 12:08 pm
…
The Modelers Hippocratic Oath …
———————————————————————————–
Climate Modelers have a Hypocritical Oath …
We’re witnessing an attempt by CAGW grant grubbers to abandon the scientific method to save their precious hypothesis from disconfirmation.
Under the scientific method, if hypothetical projections don’t match reality by a statistically significant margin for a statistically significant duration, the hypothesis must be abandoned.
Under this criteria, the CAGW hypothesis is on the cusp of being disconfirmed, and an end to the CAGW grant gravy train….
CAGW scientists don’t want to see their funding dry up and CAGW politicians are loath to give up $trillions of CO2 taxes, alt-en subsidies, alt-en mega projects, political donations from “Green” donors/industrialists, votes from brainwashed constituents, etc.
The CAGW scam is quickly approaching its denouement. It has already been 18 years with no global warming trend and every month that passes with a global warming trend below 0.2C/decade is another nail in CAGW’s coffin.
Pretty soon, there won’t be anymore space to pound in more nails…
JohnB says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:28 am
“The “downward correction” is to account for the predominance of La Nina over recent years.
The “upward correction” is to account for bias due to lack of arctic temperature stations.
Unreasonable?”
Yes. The first because predominance or not, the temperature is what it is. The second because that would conflict with that pesky satellite data, which suffers from no such deficiency.
One of the problems with the models is that they deal so poorly with clouds–AR4 says as much. (Chap. 7, I believe). They also acknowledge that cloud feedbacks could be in a very large range (from negative to positive). The discussion concludes by making a bunch of assumptions about clouds that essentially remove their influence. Call me unimpressed.
Its a bit like saying, “if I could just birdie the next 3 holes and finish with an eagle, then I would be as good as Tiger Woods and not have to do my day job anymore”.
The difference between reality and fantasy.
What they’re actually saying, is that if we had some bacon, we could have some bacon and eggs, if we had some eggs.
h/t H.B. Morton aka “Beachcomber”
I thought that this was exactly what NCDC, Hadley were doing. Total fraud!!!!!!!
[snip – more slayers crap from Doug Cotton, who is banned, sneaking in under another false name. – Anthony]
The only temperature in the ocean that relates to climate is the temperature of the thin surface layer which we can consider to be significantly less than a metre deep. Below that the ocean starts to get colder and colder, and so obviously the energy down there is not contributing to warming the air just above the surface.
Now that thin surface layer of the ocean acts nothing at all like a black or grey body. Such bodies are not transparent by definition. However you look at it, only a small portion of the direct solar radiation is absorbed by that surface layer, because most of the insolation passes down into colder layers a few metres below.
So, if you think you can apply SBL, then at least reduce the radiative flux to something less than 10%. Then of course you get a very low temperature, simply because the thin surface layer of the ocean emits far more energy by radiation than it absorbs by radiation. Its surface does not get as hot in the Sun as a black asphalt road nearby.
Where does the rest of the energy come from whilst the ocean surface is warming slightly on a clear sunny day? A similar question applies to the Venus surface. It needs an energy input of about 16,000W/m^2 for its temperature to actually rise, as it does by 5 degrees in its daytime. The direct solar radiation provides less than 20W/m^2. Where does the rest of the required energy come from? It comes by way of molecular collisions happening all through the troposphere as the whole troposphere is absorbing solar energy.
Before you say “from back radiation” you need to read my paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” (published on several websites in March 2012 and never correctly rebutted) because that explains the process whereby spontaneous radiation can only raise the temperature of a target if the radiation comes from a hotter source.
———————–
Gravity acting on individual molecules maintains a temperature gradient as the state of thermodynamic equilibrium with homogeneous total energy. This happens above and below a planet or moon’s surface – yes even in solids – and that is why the core of our Moon is hotter than its surface. It does not require internal energy generation. Because the temperature gradient is an equilibrium state, the addition of new energy in a cooler region makes the gradient less steep, and so energy moves up the temperature plot to restore the equilibrium gradient, and that is how the required energy gets into planetary surfaces – not by back radiation. This non-radiative process provides the missing energy.
Suppose the gravito-thermal effect did not exist. Then the top of a planet’s troposphere would be hotter than the base thereof because the intensity of solar radiation is attenuated as the radiation gets partially absorbed and reflected on its way down. For example, on Venus the only region where direct solar radiation can raise the temperature is in the uppermost regions of the troposphere and cooler regions above. As you go down from there the intensity is reducing whilst the temperature is rising. Hence the temperature is already well above what the intensity of the radiation could acquire as per SBL.
This gravitationally induced temperature gradient approaches a value of g/Cp where Cp is the weighted mean specific heat (not “heat capacity” by the way) and this is because potential energy gained equals kinetic energy lost. Briefly, M.g.dh = M.Cp.dt giving dt/dh = g/Cp with no minus sign because gravity is already in the opposite direction to the increase in height.
Now, in any atmosphere some molecules radiate and radiation between two objects always has a temperature levelling effect. But radiating molecules are only a small portion of the atmosphere, and so they just reduce the gravitationally induced gradient. Thus the wet adiabatic temperature gradient is less steep than the dry one. (No I won’t use the inappropriate and unnecessary term “lapse rate.”) The reduction causes the whole temperature plot to rotate about a pivoting altitude (actually about 3.5Km to 4Km up, not 5Km) and that is why the temperature at the surface is cooler in more moist regions.
In a nutshell, that is the mechanism whereby water vapour and carbon dioxide cool a planet’s surface, as empirical data clearly shows for water vapour
Until a couple of decades ago, journalists would have picked up on something as stupid as this.
However, now that the majority of journalists have been lectured/trained by the left wing nutters who occupy our universities [and are illiterate; and have lots of trouble with addition and subtraction], they are incapable of distinguishing this for what it is – horsesh*t.
JohnB says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:28 am
“The “downward correction” is to account for the predominance of La Nina over recent years.
The “upward correction” is to account for bias due to lack of arctic temperature stations.
From the Steven Mosher school of ‘adjusting’ the data to fit the hypothesis.
Btw, wulliejohn (August 19, 2014 at 11:57 am) 6 x 9 does equal 42 in base 13.
@Mr. Green Genes – How long did it take you to figure out the base it would work in? LOL
I see some unfair over-reaction.
ETH is making two points:
1. The models are generating predictions that are too high ETH proses that models should be adjusted to produce better predictions. Does anyone seriously object to this? Isn’t this what many in this forum are advocating?
2. The other point is a little puzzling. They suggest that the calculation of the average temps includes an under-representation of areas such as the artic, which are warming more than average, thus the overall average is wrong. I am puzzled, because while I have no doubt there are fewer monitoring stations in the Arctic, it is obvious that one should account for this in the calculation of the average and I assumed (naively?) that those calculating the average have already done this. If not they should. Does anyone disagree that if you want to compare a predicted average to an empirical average you should use the right empirical average? (My guess is that this second point will turn out to be a misunderstanding, surely it is already done. Maybe not perfectly, but I cannot believe they simply average over monitoring stations without adjusting for area.)
Sounds to me like they are supporting the calculation of good data, and the improvement of models that have, heretofore, predicted too high a temperature. That should be applauded, not decried.
Sorry , “ETH proposes”, not “ETH proses “
Doug UK says:
August 19, 2014 at 12:53 pm
I have told my wife that if we adjust or “correct” down the medically recommended weight for her size and if we then “correct” the actual readings of the Scales then despite her ar$e being the size of a small country, the desired weight and our ‘actual observations are very similar’.
Any comments as quick as possible as I fear I may not live long…………..
lee says:
August 19, 2014 at 8:18 pm
Frank K. says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:58 am
Thank you for that graphic. Can you tell me over what timeframe that 9999.00 inches of rainfall occurred? 😉
—
Hey that’s really all of the ice melt they’ve been predicting for over a decade…heh.
The other Phil says:
August 20, 2014 at 5:58 am
“I see some unfair over-reaction.
ETH is making two points:
1. The models are generating predictions that are too high. ETH proposes that models should be adjusted to produce better predictions. Does anyone seriously object to this? Isn’t this what many in this forum are advocating?”
No one objects to improving models – I’ve been working with computational fluid dynamics for over 20 years, and improving physical models is what I’ve been involved with throughout my career. What they were proposing in their statement were adhoc adjustments based on flimsy physical arguments so that the computational results agree with the real world data. That is NOT how science works and is absurd on it’s face. Moreover, this is NOT the sort of thing that should be in a press release because journalists and the lay public will never read the original paper to determine what caveats, assumptions, and limitations are associated with the modeling and subsequent comparisons with data.
Normally, I wouldn’t get worked up about this kind of fluffy press release by a couple of obscure science researchers, but you HAVE to realize that today climate science is not science but POLITICS, and it the politics that is doing great damage to our society in form of crushing energy prices, taxes, overly restrictive laws and regulations (most of which will have zero effect on our climate). This is no longer academic science – it is political warfare.
Werner Brozek says:
August 19, 2014 at 7:04 pm
Let me see if I have this about right. (I apologize in advance for readers who are not familiar with baseball).
Who’s on first?
It can be described in one simple word…..”Excuses”, it just looks and sounds better than I forgot, I made a mistake, I overlooked something….etc etc etc
***
Kate Forney says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:29 am
If that pitch had been 1 foot higher and 8 inches to the right, it would have been a strike, so “YERRR OUT!”.
***
And if you argue about it too much, you get a “YERRR OUTTA HERE!”
D C:
In your post at August 20, 2014 at 5:02 am you say
Clearly, I must be mistaken to think my microwave oven works if your paper says that /sarc
Richard
REPLY: Richard, it’s that Doug Cotton character again – DO NOT ENGAGE – Anthony
Richard, D.C. is Doug Cotton back again under another moniker. Same slayer nonsense.
REPLY: Yep, snipped, thanks for the catch – Anthony
Please do not say “ETH” when you mean “Knutti”; most families have an embarrassing relative.
ETH usually appears among the best universities of the world; here it is number 12, but first among the non-english speaking:
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2013#sorting=rank+region=+country=+faculty=+stars=false+search=
And it still costs less than $1000 per semester.
(That, of course, does not help Americans. Apart from the language problem, they are not welcome to open an account in a Swiss bank.)
Perhaps this phrase has fallen out of favor, but it certainly describes what is being proposed:
correction, fudge factor(noun)
a quantity that is added or subtracted in order to increase the accuracy of a scientific measure
My professors had a distinct disdain of students using fudge factors, especially if no scientific basis was used to justify them other than to arrive at an expected answer.
Didn’t Einstein do something similar and later said:
“It was the biggest blunder of my life.”
The other Phil says:
August 20, 2014 at 5:58 am
“I see some unfair over-reaction.
ETH is making two points:
1. The models are generating predictions that are too high ETH proses that models should be adjusted to produce better predictions. Does anyone seriously object to this? Isn’t this what many in this forum are advocating?”
See – the problem is that the warmists claim to know that there lurks a danger in the future. So they’re kinda predicting something, even though they go to great sophistry to avoid the word prediction. Nevertheless we all know that the question is, do the models have predictive skill.
Now OF COURSE they can “fix” their models to get a better hindcasting. But what does it do to the predictive skill of the model? Does the predictive skill go up or down?
Well how could one test that? A question that the warmist climate modelers have evaded for the last 40 years and will continue to evade for the rest of their careers, of course.
And what does it do to the claims of the warmist climate modelers that their models are objective pure incorporations of physical laws themselves? Well it wrecks this preposterous claim completely of course.
That’s why I would say, let’em adjust to their heart’s desire; it will make for a great blink comparator at Steve Goddard’s.
yes. Nutty isn’t talking about fixing the models. He is talking about ad hoc fiddling with the model output to achieve desired results.
This is ad hoc fiddling with the observational data at the point of comparison with the already ad hoc fiddled model predictions to achieve desired results.
Indeed, you should use the right empirical average – the whole way thru the process. Use the correct empirical average to rederive the physical principals, and to redefine the model parameterizations, and to retrain the model, etc, etc, etc. That is not what the rectal fedora crowd are proposing. They just want to take the existing model outputs, and fudge them toward their idea of what those outputs should have been, and then fudge the observations at the point of comparison to match … all the while maintaining the faulty models with their WAY TOO HIGH CO2 sensitivity, so as to keep the doom and gloom future intact.
Ad hoc fallacy. Unscientific bullshittery.
philjourdan says:
August 21, 2014 at 6:34 am
Shortly after it was first broadcast. So makes that about … oh 1980 ish?
Mind you, it helps if you were actually alive, or indeed sentient, when H2G2 was first broadcast.
Jtom says: August 20, 2014 at 9:05 am “Perhaps this phrase has fallen out of favor, but it certainly describes what is being proposed: correction, fudge factor(noun) a quantity that is added or subtracted in order to increase the accuracy of a scientific measure.
My professors had a distinct disdain of students using fudge factors, especially if no scientific basis was used to justify them other than to arrive at an expected answer.”
They sound like my Physics master at school, who referred to “Cook’s Constant” and “Fudge’s Formula”. Cook’s Constant was the amount you had to multiply the answer you got to get to the right answer. Fudge’s Formula was basically “Experimental result x Cook’s Constant = Correct answer.
The cunning old gentleman did, on at least one occasion give, amongst our homework, a question with parameters carefully set so that the calculated answer came out at exactly one tenth of the answer that everybody knew. It was, IIRC, to calculate either the specific heat of copper, or to calculate the water equivalent of a calorimeter. Those who got the correct (calculated) answer got full marks. Those who got that answer, but said something like: “To the best of my understanding the answer should have been such and such. This suggests that the observations or the parameters given were in error.” got a bonus (though none of us would have used such wording!) Those who worked it through, realised they had got an answer not in accordance with their prior knowledge, and slipped in a correction somewhere to get the ‘right’ answer got nothing. Excpt a bit of embarrassmnent and a perpetual reminder never to use CC and FF again.
BTW, not all the MSM is bad. Today’s “Weekend Australian” has an article entitled “Heat is on over weather bureau revising records”. Written by Graham Lloyd, the Environment Editor. A couple of paragraphs – “But the loss has been the catalyst for an escalating row that raises questions about the competence and integrity of Australia’s premier weather agency, the Bureau of Meteorology, stretching well beyond the summer storms. It goes to the heart of the climate change debate – in particular whether computer models are better than real data and whether temperature records are being manipulated in a bid to make each year hotter than the last.”
A figure shows the “Rutherglen annual average minimum temperatures, with raw data from 1913 to 2010 showing a cooling of 0.35 degrees C per century, and the “Data after ‘homogenisation’ showing a “warming of 1.73 degrees C per century.”
I think the article itself may be paywalled, if so, go to: http://joannenova.com.au/2014/08/the-heat-is-on-bureau-of-meteorology-altering-climate-figures-the-australian/
SAMURAI (August 19, 2014 at 9:13 pm) says “We’re witnessing an attempt by CAGW grant grubbers to abandon the scientific method to save their precious hypothesis from disconfirmation.“.
Close. We’re witnessing a form of gatekeeping, ie. retaining control of the narrative. The hypothesis itself doesn’t really matter very much, and they will happily change it if it can be done in a way that keeps the same people in control of the narrative. Basically because nothing is happening in the real climate, they can retain control indefinitely with frequent minor adjustments and statements to keep the goalposts moving (sorry about the mixed metaphor). If warming re-starts, that’s easy, of course. But if it becomes obvious that Earth is cooling, then expect them to seamlessly morph the hypothesis into its opposite. They did it before in the 1970s, when they switched seamlessly from ice age to global warming. They reckon they can do it again if they have to, and switching from global warming to climate change is just one bit of advance preparation.
As Max Planck said “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”. Regrettably, the world of science is still just as unscientific.
Oh, not another quote from Professor “nutty” Knutti! This guy is really a disgrace for the reknown ETHZ and far away from a scientist