Here’s a story of scientific investigation and discovery I’m proud to have
had a small part in.Regular readers may remember that I posted about a
climate station in Detroit Lakes MN last week, surveyed by volunteer Don
Kostuch, and cross posted it to the website
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1828#comments that had two air
conditioner units right next to it. It looked like an obvious cause and
effect because in 1999 on May 5th, it was determined that the a/c units were
moved off the roof of the radio station where this station resides and moved
them to the ground where the temperature sensor is close by.
Detroit Lakes, MN surveyed by Don Kostuch – Don has
single handedly done almost the entire state of Minnesota!However, some folks on the blogosphere just went, well, a little
ballistic over that assertion. It was a good thing too, because their very
loud and somewhat uncivil complaints led to an examination of this idea: if
its not the a/c units, what then did cause the temperature jump at that
time?
Steve McIntyre, of Toronto operates
www.climateaudit.org and began to
investigate the data and the methods used to arrive at the results that were
graphed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
What he discovered was truly amazing. Since NASA does not fully publish
the computer source code and formulae used to calculate the trends in the
graph, nor the correction used to arrive at the “corrected” data. He had to
reverse engineer the process by comparing the raw data and the processed
data..
Here is one of his
where he begins to understand what is happening. “This imparts an upward
discontinuity of a deg C in wintertime and 0.8 deg C annually. I checked the
monthly data and determined that the discontinuity occurred on January 2000
– and, to that extent, appears to be a Y2K problem. I presume that this is a
programming error.”
He further refines his argument showing the
and the problems with the
USHCN temperature data. He also sends an email to NASA GISS advising of the problem.
here, stating that NASA made a correction not only on their own web
page, attributing the discovery to McIntyre, but NASA also issued a
corrected set of temperature anomaly data which you can see here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
Steve McIntyre posted this data from NASA’s newly published data set from
Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) These numbers represent deviation
from the mean temperature calculated from temperature measurement stations
throughout the USA.
According to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the
hottest year ever. 1934 is.
Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now
from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are
from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003,
2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of
temperature are calculated separately.)
Top 10 GISS U.S. Temperature deviation (deg C) in New Order
8/7/2007
| Year | Old | New |
| 1934 | 1.23 | 1.25 |
| 1998 | 1.24 | 1.23 |
| 1921 | 1.12 | 1.15 |
| 2006 | 1.23 | 1.13 |
| 1931 | 1.08 | 1.08 |
| 1999 | 0.94 | 0.93 |
| 1953 | 0.91 | 0.90 |
| 1990 | 0.88 | 0.87 |
| 1938 | 0.85 | 0.86 |
| 1939 | 0.84 | 0.85 |
Here’s the old order of top 10 yearly temperatures.
| Year | Old | New |
| 1998 | 1.24 | 1.23 |
| 1934 | 1.23 | 1.25 |
| 2006 | 1.23 | 1.13 |
| 1921 | 1.12 | 1.15 |
| 1931 | 1.08 | 1.08 |
| 1999 | 0.94 | 0.93 |
| 1953 | 0.91 | 0.90 |
| 2001 | 0.90 | 0.76 |
| 1990 | 0.88 | 0.87 |
| 1938 | 0.85 | 0.86 |
I salute the work of Steven McIntyre, he has now made two major contributions to climate science.
1) Proving how the Mann “hockey stick” used in all Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was based on unsupportable data and methods.
2) Proving how yearly temperature anomalies for the USA are based on data that had been processed incorrectly.
Dr. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado also deserves credit becuase he was the one who encouraged me to pursue the www.surfacestations.org project due to his broad work on land use change and it’s affect on regional and local climate.
Gentlemen,
I congratulate Mr. Steven McIntyre. This is how scientific progress is made; by replicating experiments and confirming them or contradicting them where required.
I concur that other data should be checked as well. I understand that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to an economic depression and the closing down of lots of weather recording stations. If true, I suspect merely removing the presumably cooler weather reports from these northern areas from the worldwide sets of data, would tend to bias continuing studies. Such studies based on the set of continuing to report more southern and warmer sites, might show warming that is a statistical chimera. I urge Mr. McIntyre, (or others), to see what the statistical effect really would be.
In conjunction, with the NASA, these changes Would change worldwide temperature history. Alternatively, it might confirm it. Either way, It is Science that needs be done.
Quoth TCO:
Why can’t climate scientists do proper error checking? The US GISS temp data has major errors and nobody in “the consensus” detected them. Considering the poor peer review the MBH hockey stick got from those same “scientists” though, that’s par for the course.
So, thanks to McIntyre, the hockey stick became a total fiasco for the warmmongers (especially for Michael Mann’s reputation). Now the despised skeptic who proved that the HS was scientific fabulism has debunked Hansen’s treasured “1998 HOTTEST YEAR EVER” meme. And on the same day this story appeared too:
Finally, if the US data is so dodgy, imagine how bad the rest of the world’s temp record keeping has been. We need a Global Climate Audit ASAP!
> As such, this doesn’t, in and of itself, actually provide any falsifying evidence.
Oh sure it does. At least the popular press, Al Gore, case for global warming. Let’s not conflate that with the scientific case for anthropogenic global warming which is far from decided.
It’s the people who came up with the phrase “global warming denier” to stifle dissent by implying the parallel to Holocaust deniers that take it on the chin and for that I am truly grateful.
I look at things in many a different way…for instance…
How do the temps compare in 5 year overlapping blocks?
1880-1885, 1882-1887, 1884-1889, etc.
How does the data compare in 10 year overlapping blocks?
1880-1890, 1885-1895, etc.
Take the top 10 highest temps and the top 10 lowest temps, plot them in regards to the data sets above (5 and 10 year blocks) and see what happens.
Run a historic line and plot in volcano eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, and more, and see what that does to the data…
And if CO2 is being blamed, and the US is supposedly at fault by CO2 production, what about the reverse? Rainforests are being cut down at an alarming rate and plants reverse CO2 back into O2…so what kind of factor does that have (and this will run globally, but affect the US locally – so calculate that in and plot to the graphs created above…and add in population statistics…
What do we see when this is done? To me, it looks like, on the over-all scale of things, people have minimal impact on the climate…there is a slight change, but at the viewed rate, it will take hundreds of years for the climate to actually change enough for us to worry…
Chris,
You have mischaracterized the issues…
Climate change is real. It always has been and it always will be. The earth is not a steady-state climate machine.
The question at hand is whether or not the earth is getting hotter. If yes, how much hotter does our best scientific guestimates suggest it will get?
Right now we are not getting our best scientific guestimates. We’re getting a bunch of crap based upon crap data – GIGO.
But let’s just say the GIGO issue didn’t exist. Let’s say we had good data and quality science. Next we’d want to know how much hotter earth would get and for how long. Right now we have no idea.
Next we’d want to estimate the effects of a world made X deg hotter over time period Y for duration Z.
That way we could make a best guess at the ramifications and the scale of any potential effort to migigate the problem if, in fact, it is a problem. There are some who seem to claim that both man and other species (with specific exceptions, of course) thrive much better in warmth than cold. Maybe an earth warmed by X deg would be a BETTER place.
But let’s assume it wouldn’t be a better place. Let’s assume that warming of X deg. would be BAD.
Then we’d want to know the cause of the increased heat. The less you know about the cause of a particular problem the less chance there is of fixing it or mitigating the BAD effects.
So, does GW have an “A” for “anthropogenic” in front of it or an “N” for “natural”. Is warming caused by man-made CO2 or by urban heat islands or by lawn sprinklers or what? Or are the causes natural? Maybe solar activity, or cosmic rays, or whatever. Or is it some combination and, if so, in what measures.
After we knew all that we might be able to determine if there is any hope of altering anything and at what cost.
To just go off and decide that we need to undertake massive international programs (particularly ones that clobber the US while leaving out China and India) for the sake of “insurance” without any idea of the real nature of the problem (presuming there is a problem) is nothing short of stupid.
I don’t live in a flood zone. Not only do I not live in a flood zone but I don’t have any sizeable body of water particularly close to my home. Not only that, but my house is atop a small rise. I’d be a fool to buy flood insurance just because a bunch of hyperventilating salesmen are blathering about reports churned up under the GIGO principal.
That stuff about glaciers and the polar ice-caps and Mount Kilimanjaro, pure Photoshop!! Then Katrina was all made up, and now tornadoes in Brooklyn–get out of here!!
They’re just trying to attack the business community, because they enjoy that.
I always knew that the only information that is true is the information that I want to be true.
Re: Evan Jones —
“Now isn’t this statement interesting, where does this dubious 95% figure come from”
The “consensus”?
“and why does the anonymous author couch it in adversarial terms?”
Well . . . it IS a controversy!
1) Whose “consensus”?
2) Since when was making a surface station survey — something that has never been done and has been asked to be done by many in the field — controversial? Perhaps it is controversial to fearful minds with a special agenda.
3) Steve McIntyre’s contributions are hardly controversial. If they were, NASA would not have changed the data and credited him.
OK, so there isn’t any warming going on at all. Or maybe there is a little or maybe we’re even cooling down a little – I don’t care. Would you propose that we just stop looking for a replacement for our cars completely? Or crank up the heat or A/C? That’s a great idea … if you are of the false impression that we will be able to extract oil out of the ground AT THE SAME PRICE indefinitely … and if you think that the Middle East will remain “stable” forever.
Yes, I know we don’t get a lot of our oil from there but if a 1% drop in their production can send the crude market in a tail spin then what do you think will happen to our economy if the 5, 10, or 20% of our imports from the region are cut off?
And what do think think will happen to the energy markets when China’s population begins entering the First World? Their population is some 3-4 times our population. Where are they going to get their energy imports? You people actually believe this won’t impact the situation for the current First World countries?
NOT TO MENTION INDIA’S POPULATION which is some 3 times our population (in the U.S.)…..
Whatever people…. You can have your day in the sun (and I do applaud the person’s who uncovered this serious oversight), but we STILL have to find alternative solutions no matter how much you want to gloat.
Get over yourselves and start looking at the writing on the wall…..
I am confused. When did the scientific method change? Was it when politicians and marketeers got involved?
So, for those of you who have your head buried in a dark place, here it is:
1.Theorize something
2. “Prove” that it is true
3. Have a group of peers using exactly the same conditions come up with exactly the same results.
4. Have an independent (read “not paid for a conclusion”) body review theory, proof, and results.
5. One cannot prove by example alone, but one can disprove by a single example of failure.
When did science and results become a matter of “interpretation”? Why did I study math, physics, and analysis techniques in college if I can cook up a rediculous theory, cook the tests and results, and ask for billions in grants? Oh yeah, and since I was “smart” enough to come up with the theory I now become the only authority, moral or scientifically, to determine what is “correct”?
Clarity is pleasurable. Question facts and motivations.
Retired Spook – A paper / article written by Vincent R. Gray updated in 2003 said “Examination of the data shows that almost all of the 1901-1996 temperature rise for Russia/Soviet Union took place in one year, 1987 to 1988.” This was about 3 years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, but two years after Perestroika and Glasnost.
Gray says in another paper “Although some Russian stations have excellent records over a very long time, the service has deteriorated in recent years, together with the rest of the Russian economy. In 1988 there were 244 temperature stations, but in 1989 135 were closed; mainly the smaller ones, leaving only 109 stations. Most of the 91 5°x5° grids in Russia/Siberia in Figure 2 will be represented by single stations. Recent monthly records from Russian stations show many gaps and doubtful figures.” In the same paper he notes “Monthly temperature records for the Russian stations show an extreme temperature range of around 60°C. Early measurements are likely to have been in primitive or deprived conditions. Stations would have been operated by political prisoners.”
The papers (or articles) mentioned above can be found on http://www.john-daly.com. At one point on that same site I recall seeing an interesting hypothesis that temperature readings from Siberia pre-Soviet collapse should be suspect because officials had a strong economic incentive to report lower-than-actual temperatures: heating oil subsidies.
So here we have an interesting artifact in Russian / Soviet temperature data that presents itself as a discontinuity not unlike Steve McIntyre’s “Y2K bug”. In this case the discontinuity may have an economic driver behind it, not a mathematical error. Or the discontinuity may truly be due to climate change.
Re DCB’s comments —
“Simply put, your attempt at providing a counterexample that calls into question prevailing the climatological paradigm falls on its face by simple logically fallacy: you cannot generalize or challenge an entire set by simply addressing very small, singular outlier; nor can you provide a factual counterexample via inductive logic.”
In a word, sheesh!
Calm down a bit and quit fabricating straw men by which to justify your rants.
What is going on here is a legitimate complaint — the obfuscation of methods by a preeminent scientific organization that makes public pronouncements of the results of those methods without allowing a thorough examination of them.
Simply put, methinks you doth protest too much.
What is it you are so afraid of? Do you fear the survey of temperature stations, a valid correction of the temperature data, or the storm of controversy and political theater — of which you are a part — that may swirl about it?
My guess is that you fear the folks you are attempting to marginalize and manufacture as fallacious contrarians.
Nasa should also get a call out for admitting their mistake and publishing corrected numbers in a timely fashion.
There is considerable discussion on Slashdot.org on this topic and some analysis you might light to see.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=266463&op=Reply&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=20186073
RE Global warming insurance we have two opions. we can enable alternatives and reduce/utilize waste streams or we can crash the middle class to pump co2 into the ground. I personally don’t think we need more Perrier.
“If climate change is real (regardless of the cause) then we’re screwed.”
Uhh, how exactly are we screwed, now, Chris? So, it’s a little bit warmer out, crops grow farther north, some tropical climates get less livable, whatever.
That’s really not my definition of “screwed” at all, and totally pales in comparison to gun control and/or an audit by the IRS. Those, may friend, are examples of getting “screwed”. Let’s keep it real.
I will only believe that you believe in this crap, Chris, if you tell me that you bought some land in Florida at 23 ft msl elevation, or whatever the AlGore prophesizes. It will be beach-front in a few years, right? Put your money where your mouth is, people!
Excellent work. However, I don’t think I am being too punctilious by pointing out that your confusing “affects” and “effects” undermines the rigorous tone of the argument.
The unfortunate aspect of the US politcal situation is that it has obscured what the true objective of energy policy in the US should be. The global warming debate is unresolvable scientifically and politically. However, I argue that the true objective of US energy policy should be to grow the economy of the US, but not at the expense of the environment or the providing of wealth to those who endanger national security. Therefore, the number one task should be to develop an energy infrastructure which is not based on use of (or inefficient use) of fossil fuels, and has unlimited growth potential. We could argue about the best way to do this, but the time is right to emphasize nuclear energy, hydrogen production, and fuel cells. The technology to be able to pour water into your gas tank or fuel cell, and have a gallium/aluminum reaction release hydrogen, is here. The byproduct is alluminum oxide, which is then recyled back into alluminum. At 3 dollar a gallon gas, this technology is economic, without further refinement in processes which purify alluminum. Too many ideas to discuss here, but lets move on from the politics and wasteful scientific effort, and start using science to further the economy and environment of humanity.
The NASA GISS webpage is, as of 8-10-2007, still pushing the wrong temperatures at the top of their lungs.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070208/
Can they please print the correction ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Regarding GW Insurance:
Please don’t be giving that shameless huckster Al Gore any new ideas by which to fleece easily deceived suckers.
McIntyre did some work on the Hockey Stick, but he did not ‘prove’ that it was BS. He found a small error which acccording to three other papers, did njot really matter. Read about it on the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113027943843479277-5reMaU4_37mSf3Us8BhDeHITDyA_20061026.html?mod=blogs
“That stuff about glaciers and the polar ice-caps and Mount Kilimanjaro, pure Photoshop!!”
The shrinking ice pack on Kilimanjaro has nothing to do with global warming.
Evan and others are absolutely correct when they say “The reality of the situation is that anyone who refuses to divulge methods or data has lost the argument forthwith–by automatic forfeit.” because all data supporting conclusions must be made available for scrutiny if those conclusions are to have any validity.
Now maybe some of the people posting here who are intellectually honest will similarly push for the release of the “tweaked” govt. computer models of the 9/11 WTC collapses which are still being kept secret.
Because after all the evidence is growing that 9/11 was an inside job, or else you have to explain how the terrorists got demolition materials into all 3 WTCs (including WTC 7 which was never struck by an airplane). MOLTEN STEEL AND/OR IRON IN THE BASEMENTS CANNOT BE EXPLAINED BY THE FAITH-BASED OFFICIAL CONSPIRACY THEORY, see http://moltenmetalsmokinggun.blogspot.com/
Bruce:
Your link is a couple of years out of date. Here’s the latest skinny on the hockey stick and McIntyre’s part in busting it.
Highlights:
So the numbers are wrong, but what if you took it at a philosophic approach? Merely because the numbers are wrong and possibly prove that global warming doesn’t exist, does it give us the right to say we should carry on doing what we do?
Clearly the planet is being damaged and you don’t need numbers to show that. But clearly, as evidenced in the Dead Sea, if left alone the world can heal itself.
By saying that the numbers are wrong and we don’t need to change is ludicrous. At least by raising issues, even if they are incorrect in substance, we can move on and change our ways and make things better.
The mere fact that the only people who stand to benefit from the knowledge that global warming is a shame are the very corporations who caused the problems in the first place should raise warning bells, but then sloppy science is used to support their side as well.
As far as I’m concerned I’d rather take the side of the sloppy science of global warming than the sloppy side of science that is eventually going to lead to more senseless destruction of this planet, all for what? A fistful of dollars.
If you plot NASA’s updated data onto a graph, you still see a pretty interesting trend.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/08/10/new-nasa-data-still-proves-global-warming-is-real/
Seven of the ten hottest five-year periods have all occurred within the last decade.