Blink comparator of GISS USA temperature anomaly – h/t to Zapruder
The last time I checked, the earth does not retroactively change it’s near surface temperature.
True, all data sets go through some corrections, such as the recent change RSS made to improve the quality of the satellite record which consists of a number of satellite spliced together. However, in the case of the near surface temperature record, we have many long period stations than span the majority of the time period shown above, and they have already been adjusted for TOBS, SHAP, FILNET etc by NOAA prior to being distributed for use by organizations like GISS. These adjustments add mostly a positive bias.
In the recent data replication fiasco, GISS blames NOAA for providing flawed data rather than their failure to catch the repeated data from September to October. In that case they are correct that the issue arose with NOAA, but in business when you are the supplier of a product, most savvy businessmen take a “the buck stops here” approach when it comes to correcting a product flaw, rather than blaming the supplier. GISS provides a product for public consumption worldwide, so it seems to me that they should pony up to taking responsibility for errors that appear in their own product.
In the case above, what could be the explanation for the product changing?
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Bill Marsh – if, before 1999, urbanisation effects were over-corrected, an improved algorithm would reduce the correction. Your problem seems to be that you are so blinkered and prejudiced that you can’t possibly think about the issue in a scientific, objective way.
Bill in Vigo – “From what little my little pea sized brain can understand it that most of the adjustments for UHI seem to more often than not to not change the urban stations to any useful extent down but to adjust the rural stations upward to match the urban set” – your candour about the size of your brain is admirable. Urban adjustments work in precisely the opposite way to what you described.
ANTHONY, BETTER CHECK THIS ONE, ESP LAST PARA. ~ EVAN
We all know it has cooled and has done for quite a while.
For the scientific community in more normal times it would be just a matter of noting changes up or down and what if anything it was telling us lomg term..if at all.
However these grapths are nothing to do with the fate of the world.
By closing the argument on the theory of AGW from the start and going as far as calling sceptics “Holocaust deniers” the “Warmers” have raised the stakes against themselves.
Every bit of data is in fact about the long term future of all leading AGW scientists, their lifestyle and importance…and of course the excuse for politicians to use AGW as a means for taxation and for the various stock exchanges to trade in carbon offsets.
How on earth have we got to this stage?
Well…..using climate models that put in the positives of the argument and ignoring the negatives is a good start but so much more.
Do not expect the Hansens and Gore’s of this world to admit they are wrong…early retirement or a low profile will be the order of the day.
PS
[snip] not relevant to this discussion – please don’t post on this topic contained in the [snip] again – Anthony
Why does this look like a page from George Orwells “1984”? Revisionist…… rewriting history to support the present policy. This makes me ill.
Braden, I think the quote that may be most relevant here is:
He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.
What troubles me is not that errors occur, it’s the possibility that erroneous data may be used to determine future economic and public policy.
Mongo,
Welcome to the New America.
Hang on for a lot more in the months ahead.
What I find amazing is that the chart is based around +/- 1 degree C. How many mercury thermometers are accurate, or at least readable, to less than 1 degree C?
Climate change ‘to halt ice age’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7722300.stm
A future post perhaps.
“if, before 1999, urbanisation effects were over-corrected, an improved algorithm would reduce the correction.”
They certainly were overcorrected if you need to keep the alarmism going. Since every adjustment seems to result in more warming, we are correctly skeptical. Do you have any evidence that urbanization effects were overcorrected before 1999, or are you simply making it up to let Hansen off the hook?
Ahh yes, but can they change the sun?
Two thumbs up Phil … You nailed it.
RW
Take a look at the data. Your hypoothesis that UHI was overcorrected before 1999 simply doesn’t hold water. What you need to postulate is that in 1999 it was discovered that UHI was:
Undercorrected for 1880-1900
Overcorrected for 1900-1968
Increasingly undercorrected after 1968
Sounds pretty plausible, yes?
Looks like they are gradually phasing out the infamous ‘hockey stick’?
Sneeeeeky. 😉
Record high temperatures by continent:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Continent.jpg
Interestingly, none of these were in the ’30s, and none of them were more recent than 1974.
As I suspected. Watching the blink comparator there was an obvious “kink” in the adjusted data circa 1964. Then Jonas N. provides a link to an early Hansen paper where, sure enough, there is a “kink” in the adjustment in 1964. See Fig 3. p35. Indefensible.
RW: “Your problem seems to be that you are so blinkered and prejudiced that you can’t possibly think about the issue in a scientific, objective way.”
Then please explain to us in a scientific, objective way how it happened that they apparently over-corrected for UHI from 1970 onwards as well as before 1900, but apparently under-corrected between 1900 and 1970?
“Change” for the Worse
By Alan Caruba Friday, November 14, 2008
Previously I have written that the global warming hoax was essentially dead and that the many Green organizations advocating all kinds of programs to wreck the nation’s economy were “desperate.”
I was wrong.
The Sierra Club, the Friends of the Environment, and the countless other Green organizations are euphoric and they have reason to be.
The election of Barack Obama and a Democrat controlled Congress has put the Greens in the driver’s seat and we face at least four and possibly eight years of executive orders, legislation, and regulation based on a scientifically baseless lie that will introduce Americans to what life is like in Third World nations where electricity is both costly and unpredictable.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/6277
People can say whatever they want, but in my opinion the keyword in all this is “fabrication”. I have been critizised for my position on this but I maintain that with all these “brilliant” and “professional” scientist it has to be next to impossible to screw things as they do. Considering a declared goal to prove global warming and AGW, one can only become hugely skeptic about what´s going on when temperature readings of earlier times are consequently being corrected downwards and at the same time the temperatures of the last few decades are consequently being corrected upwards. It just doesn´t match up.
If you watch it, you can see that the updated graph tends to flatten out the older data while the newer data gets a more steeper slope.
Frigging bogus is you ask me. Maybe they are trying to help Mann’s hockey stick II.
janama (11:48:30) :
“What I find amazing is that the chart is based around +/- 1 degree C. How many mercury thermometers are accurate, or at least readable, to less than 1 degree C?”
As an ancient weatherman, I can truthfully state that every official mercury thermometer I used was quite easily read to the nearest tenth of a degree with no more error induced than plus or minus one-tenth of a degree.
For me, the message is somewhat diluted by having the two graphs show different data: The 2008 version drops the 5-year trend for the leftmost section of the graph (around 1805), and adds-in the extra data post 2000.
This effectively creates a strawman for people trying to distract the discussion from the changes in the data. Any chance that someone could repeat the graph using the same data periods (only)???
REPLY: Unfortunately the 1999 data in raw form is not available to redo this. But if anyone knows of it, please advise. – Anthony
GISS is corrupt.
Apparently by design.
M White (11:51:40) :Climate change ‘to halt ice age’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7722300.stm
A future post perhaps.
I have to say, the second paragraph stands out for me.
“Based on geological history, the Earth would be expected to enter a new ice age in 10,000 to 100,000 years. ”
Lets assume that the 10,000 years is correct, I think it’s a little far fetched to even assume mans influence on the planet then. I feel this is another nonense report on behalf of the BBC.
So according to RW since a whole string of unsubstantiated, undocumented and darn unlikely conjectures explaining the historic changes might be true, we should just accept these changes. We should not question them or ask how they came about, we should just BELIEVE!
Heck they might be true and I might win powerball tomorrrow. The second of the two is a higher probability, though I haven’t bought a ticket.
Why is all of this so important? The Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court decision in April 2007 apparently held that CO2 was an “air pollutant.” Using that decision, the Sierra Club succesfully appealed a permit granted by EPA on the basis that the EPA failed to apply “BACT” or best available control technology to limit CO2 emissions from a second waste-coal-fired electric generating unit at Deseret Power Electric Cooperative’s existing Bonanza Power Plant near Bonanza, Utah. Permits for over 100 new coal-fired plants and expansion of refineries now appear to be in legal limbo, pending a decision by the new administration over what the BACT would be. The EPA appeals board, in a historical understatement, said: “In remanding this permit to the Region for reconsideration of its conclusions regarding application of BACT to limit CO2 emissions, the Board recognizes that this is an issue of national scope that has implications far beyond this individual permitting proceeding.” http://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/EAB_Web_Docket.nsf/Recent~Additions/C8C5985967D8096E85257500006811A7/$File/Remand…39.pdf
IIRC, coal supplies about 50% of our electricity and no new refineries have been built in decades – only existing ones have been expanded. Since CO2 is now apparently classified as an actual “air pollutant” AND this decision may now serve as a precedent requiring control of CO2 emissions, ANY future emissions of CO2 will probably now be required to be regulated. No mention is made of how this will affect future political campaigns or oratory in Congress.
What means TOBS, SHAP, FILNET ?
Thanks