NASA's twist on global sea ice loss

NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased

Greenland’s Riviera – their green southwest. Will another Maunder minimum

grip the region in cages of ice again, or will bells ring in the portside squares,

as they did in the 1300’s before that cooling came, and ships sailed the fiords?

(Source: NASA)

Excerpt:

Washington Post correspondant Juliet Eilperin, in her 12-26-08 report entitled “New climate change estimates more pessimistic,” dutifully surveys the latest bleak findings of the climate change community. Her primary source is a recently released survey comissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program – expanding on the findings of the 2007 4th IPPC Report on Climate Change. Apparently this “new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.” One of Eilperin’s primary examples of alarming new data is reported as follows:

“In one of the reports most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea level rise could be as much as 4 feet by 2100. The IPCC had projected a sea level rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the past two years show the world’s major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are now losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice that exists in the Alps.”

Three years ago what NASA quantified as an alarming loss of annual ice loss from Greenland was easily demonstrated at that time to be an insignificant loss, and today NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased since then.

http://ecoworld.com/blog/2008/12/26/pessimistic-reporting-optimistic-data/

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JimB
December 30, 2008 4:33 am

“As you are not a scientist I can understand your misunderstanding of the scientific process. You have to undertand the complexity of AGW and the particularly wide range of scientific disciplines that come under this umbrella term.
I’ve been reading here for quite some time, as well as several other sites, and have worked in technology for 40yrs. I understand the breadth.
“It is still a relatively young science but the equipment at our disposal means that great progress is being made. As with any study the more you know the more questions you have and the more you need to know. ”
Are you attempting to address my point regarding scientific PROCESS with this statement? No matter how “new” a science may be, it’s processes and experiments at any given time must still must be transparent. Why shouldn’t this basic law apply to what Hansen, Gavin, et al, have done?
“Sceptics have the easy job, they can just nit pick, argue complete nonsense or deliberately mislead to fulfil whatever agenda they are on. You can see above the complete lack of peer reviewed work on this subject, read the majority of posts and you see that the sceptic prefers using sarcasm to real science.”
Again…I think you ARE attempting to rewrite rules. No one has to prove that something else IS the cause, just to prove that some particular thing IS NOT the cause. That’s not how science works, according to every other discipline.
When a group of people say “I’ve discovered how X works”, they provide the “means” of their discovery so that other people can replicate their work and say “Yes…we did it here, too, and you’re RIGHT”, or they say “We ATTEMPTED to do that here, and it DID NOT work, so we think you’re wrong”.
In order to do that, people need to have access to the data and the methods. That HAS to happen before you can make any claims at all regarding peer review.
“I’m afraid I am not rewriting the rules but still making sure people understand that real science is based on the peer review system for very good reasons, it helps keep poor science out. It is not perfect but has served us well for a very long time.”
You still have not addressed the issues brought up before. Why do you keep dodging this in conversation? Everyone here understands that “real science” is based on the peer review system. That’s exactly what people here are asking for.
You’re sounding more and more like Will, a.k.a. Whack-A-Mole.
JimB

Frank. Lansner
December 30, 2008 4:35 am

@Mary Hinge
You write:
“I’m assuming you are referring to the October GISS records from Siberia which were corrected very quickly. If you think that all temperature data is useless because of this mistake then you have no right to discuss this subject further.”
My god, Mary. How can you be a part of so many debates and not know that the data “adjustments” are COUNTLESS ??
(and even though statistically impossible, every time we see strong adjustment, the adjustments brings data nearer in line with typical AGW argument)
And then you dare speak of my “right to discuss this subject” ?!!
Who are you? What are you? Very unpleasant !
If you don’t like to debate where people don’t always have your opinions, you are free to stay away from real debates like WUWT. You have the nerve to come here and play judge? Sad to see.
I don’t know, but it could (!?) sound as though you are not familiar with for example:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/30/ushcn_corrections.gif
It shows NOAA corrections of 0,55 F, mostly after second world war.
So most of the global warming after second world war is indeed corrections. Corrections that seems not to fit with for example solar activity.
Therefore all further conclusions , peer reviewet papers ets depend on the 100% correctness of the results and methods to create these huge changes in data.
But for some reason, Mary, you defend that nobody should see how this was carried out? The world must not be allowed to validate??
Why is that so important for you?
Your argument seems to be only somthing like: “this is data and not research paper”. Is that rhetoric good enough for you? Do you think anyone else than hardcore AGW people will except those words as a real sound argument?
Do you think anyone will say: ‘Ahh, Mary called it “data” so no reason to validate how on earth they got those vital changes’?
Well if you think so Mary, you will be surpriced.
NASA/NOAA/GISS themselves has created the suspicious light upon them. They cant blame anyone else for their strange behaviour.

December 30, 2008 4:50 am

An interesting take on sea level rise by Nils-Axel Morner, sea level geologist (it isn’t happening, notably in the maldives)
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf

Peter
December 30, 2008 4:50 am

Mary Hinge:
So, if La Nina is an overall cooling of the world’s oceans, where does all that heat go to? And where does the heat come from to replace the lost heat at the end of the La Nina? And by what mechanism(s)?
And, if El Nino is an overall warming of the world’s oceans, the same questions apply in reverse – where does the extra heat come from? Where does it go? By what mechanism(s)?
Kinda goes against the theory that the heat is hiding somewhere, just waiting to come back with a venegance, doesn’t it?

Disregarding whole data sets because of occasional human error is no reason to throw them out

Just like disregarding valid science simply because it isn’t peer-reviewed, or because the author is rumored to have links to the oil industry.

JimB
December 30, 2008 5:24 am

“Science is about VALID questioning and sceptism. Disregarding whole data sets because of occasional human error is no reason to throw them out, especially when they follow the same trends/data lines as other data sets measuring the same thing.”
Sorry, Mary, but once again, you won’t entertain what others consider to be valid questions. You want to define what’s valid, and what isn’t, what’s germain to the discussion, and what isn’t.
Doesn’t work that way. As soon as you say “X is happening because of Y”, you must be willing to defend that. And if you’re not, then you have no right to make the claim to begin with.
JimB

Steve Keohane
December 30, 2008 5:33 am

The only denialists are the AGW’s who insist weather trends are climate, that earth’s climate is supposed to be static, and have some childhood complex that they are the cause of whatever they fanatasize is wrong in the world. At best climate science is an infant, and without unadjusted empirical data for at least 150 years, pretty clueless. I think anything less than 150 years is too strongly affected by the multi-decadal weather cycles to seperate out climate from weather. It is obvious just the el Nino and la Nina patterns’ effect is about .1 deg/decade absolute, which is greater than the ‘climate’ anomaly. I am not refering to just temperature, rather all the parameters that affect weather/climate. Since no one knows what all the parameters are yet, the science does not exist yet, so climate science is not.

Bruce Cobb
December 30, 2008 5:52 am

Mary Hinge (03:10:12) :
Bruce Cobb (17:02:46) :
Unfortunately Mary, AGW is actually not real science, but pseudo-science
Why don’t you actually provide some real arguments instead of using the usual denier trick of trying to convince everyone, even yourself, that it is not real science. the same tricks are used by Evolution denialists now and whgere used by the sceptics of plate tectonics.

Actually, Mary, you have it backwards, as usual. It is the AGWers, including yourself who use every trick in the book EXCEPT to discuss the science. This is because they don’t actually have anything, except idiotic computer models which ASSUME C02 is a major climate driver and that man’s measely contribution of 3% of the total C02 is enough to have an impact on climate that we need to be alarmed about. For the climate hysterics, GIGO is their friend.
It was AGW ideology which came up with and then allowed the infamous “hockey stick” graph to become accepted as “science”, and trumpeted by the IPCC as the smoking gun for manmade global warming. It took skeptics to debunk it.

Les Johnson
December 30, 2008 6:35 am

Mary Hinge: your:
The data shows sea levels rising sharply now the La Nina effect is subsiding (ENSO is now neutral with slight cooling). FACT.
Fact. The sea level as measured at the U of C is flat since late 2005. Did the previous la Nina last for over 3 years?

JimB
December 30, 2008 7:21 am

“My god, Mary. How can you be a part of so many debates and not know that the data “adjustments” are COUNTLESS ??
(and even though statistically impossible, every time we see strong adjustment, the adjustments brings data nearer in line with typical AGW argument)”
She does know. If she read nothing else but WUWT, she’d still know…which leads to the logical conclusion that she’s just trolling.
Good job though, Mary… folks here keep rising to your bait, including me, for a time.
It’s obvious you have no desire for open debate…but you sure do seem to enjoy the attention.
Good luck…you’ll soon need a new cause, I fear.
JimB

Les Johnson
December 30, 2008 8:09 am

correction:
The sea level as measured at the U of C is flat since late 2005.
Should be:
The sea level trend as measured at the U of C is flat since late 2005.

Pierre Gosselin
December 30, 2008 8:49 am

MARY HINGE
WHY NOT ACCEPT MY BET OFFERED AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS BLOG?
AT WHAT SEA LEVEL RISE OVER THE NEXT 5 OR 10 YEARS WOULD YOU ACCEPT THE BET? OR AT WHICH SUM OF MONEY?
Remember, Al Gore suggested 20 feet – soon!
Prof. Stefan Ramstorf of the Postdamer Institute projects 1.4 meters by 2100.
(That’s 7+cm every five years.
If you aren’t sure enough about your science to make a small bet, then you at least ought not act like such a stubborn old cow in this forum.
Anyone who refuses to accept my bet at a fraction of the SLR made by your idols really ought to put a sock in it.

Pierre Gosselin
December 30, 2008 8:53 am

As I said, I have yet to find a single alarmist who is ready to put his/her own money down on his/her own predictions. Not a single one.
NADA!
As long as I don’t see any money on the table, the discussion is over.

Moptop
December 30, 2008 9:06 am

“Math is hard!” –Barbie
I seem to remember learning in school that the ocean was very deep. Any drop in sea level due to a temp decrease would have to operate over the entire volume of the ocean, from the surface to miles deep. I guess that Mary somehow has figured out that the La Nina surface temp decreases went miles deep. Either that, or the first few feet of the ocean contracted by a huge amount.
Maybe Mary is saying that a relatively limited area of the Pacific, just a few meters deep, contracted so much that it dropped the Indian, South Pacific, North Pacific, Arctic, South Atlantic, Tropical Atlantic, Mediterainain, and Caribbean, North Atlantic Oceans.
Or perhaps she believes that the whole ocean oscillates in temperature rapidly. Maybe she thinks that whe the sun comes out from behind a cloud, the whole Earth gets sunny at that moment, or when there is a cold day in Camden, New Jersey for example, the whole planet gets cold… I don’t know. Maybe Mary could explain how a sea surface level change occupying maybe 20ft of the surface sitting on miles of water over about a quarter of the Area of the Pacific Ocean could lower sea levels?
For the record, I am not actually expecting an answer. Warmies never answer direct questions that should have simple answers. They refer to their faith, and thump their IPCC, like W. J. Bryant in “Inherit the Wind” thumps his Bible, and explain knowingly that they “just know” that we are wrong, if they answer at all.

Pamela Gray
December 30, 2008 11:03 am

Who else here has direct knowledge and actual experience with the political and turf motivated peer review and grant review process? I do. While at a major research facility with a stellar reputation, I experienced both. I loved the political “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” grant review process. Grants are sent forward after a gate keeping meeting. During the gate keeping meeting, the ones with power get their grants forwarded on as long as they vote to forward the other researchers’ grants (they all sit on these committees together). And if you don’t play this game, you can kiss your grant goodby. I know of two very expensive multi-site grant proposals that did not have the necessary clinical trial studies that would have demonstrated that the data collection techniques were not doable. Yet both study proposals sailed through review. Why? Because the other peer reviewers on the panel wanted their grant proposals to go forward and needed the votes (they don’t vote on their own proposals and must depend on others in the room to vote for them).
The paper submission and peer review process is very much the same game. If someone else is working in the same area as you are and they are on the review committee for the journal (we will call X) you have submitted to, you have precious little chance of getting your paper published in that journal, so you have to keep searching for a journal that wants to compete with “X”. My paper had to go that route. The initial peer review was a scathing negative review from the editor of the journal we submitted to who just happened to be studying the same phenomena I was. We then had to determine which journal was usually trying to compete with journal X. Their review was delightful and our paper was published. The other journal (X) eventually published the paper from the editor who was working on the same thing. Poor thing. We got ours out first. Made him mad too.
Unfortunately my own camp played the game too. Even to the point of trying to fudge the data. Since the original data was collected and before we submitted for publication, a new piece of equipment was able to produce a much sharper signal that made for a prettier picture and gee, we should use the picture of that signal instead of the one I actually used. I was able to stop that switch from happening so my published paper has accurate data, but at the cost of my job as a researcher at that facility. That was not the only thing that I objected to. The list goes on. I was so incensed with the entire experience that I took my original raw data with me when I left, fearing that it would be used inappropriately. I still have it.
Having had this experience, I can well imagine the type of thing that goes on with climate studies. If you are not playing the game in town, there will not be a place at the table for you. End of story. This is made exponentially worse by game players who have turned to the media and politics to keep the gravy train going.
So my dear Mary Hinge, you are unhinged if you think the ivory tower is clean and white. It is anything but that. It is as down and dirty as Illinois’ pay to play politics. And likely as dirty as many other such motivated groups.

J. Peden
December 30, 2008 11:30 am

Good job though, Mary… folks here keep rising to your bait, including me, for a time.
Yes, it seems almost irresistible. But what I do in the case of such trolls is to first prove to my satisfaction that they are trolls – for example, they will get something completely wrong, won’t admit or discuss it, resort to logical or factual fallacies [such as those favorites based upon demonization of “Big Oil”, “Peer Review = Given Truth”, etc., etc.], etc. – then simply not even read most of what they write from then on. Because, true to troll-form, all they do is repeat the same tactics and perhaps add some more – the ultimate of which is the good old “you can’t make me respond on a rational level” tactic.
I’ve seen trollish behavior way too often to feel any real responsibility to read everything they say – btw, another one of our intellectual values which trolls play upon to keep themselves in the spotlight and which simultaneously tends to drive the reader crazy – because of the obdurate stupidity involved in troll posts.
But I do read the rebuttals to the trolls, because there is often a lot of very good info and rational thought put into these responses.
So a genuine “thank you” to all who respond to the trolls with rational/scientific thinking. It certainly won’t affect the trolls, but it really educates me. And I suppose someone has to do it, lest the trolls then try to claim victory, you know, because “no one there could even muster a response to my killer-arguments!” – when the arguments and trolls would actually have simply been intentionally ignored, once having been defined at the outset as solely trollish behaviors in their essential nature, and thus rightfully ignorable.

J. Peden
December 30, 2008 11:46 am

But I do read the rebuttals to the trolls, because there is often a lot of very good info and rational thought put into these responses.
See Pamela Gray’s 11:03:16 response above, for example. QED, and a faint-praise “thank you” to the troll, Mary Hinge, also.

December 30, 2008 12:25 pm

Pamela
You are quite right of course, but the game is selected for you in the first place with climate change matters.
I attend the occasional UK sea level conference (which is why I was hoping Mary Hinge would tell everyone how accurate satellites aren’t) and there is a pecking order on this subject which in the UK’s case is;
The Ipcc
Eu Govt
British Govt
Defra
UK Govt agencies- such as the Environment agency
The various levels of councils-county, district, parish and so on down to individual organisations such as schools.
The IPCC have stated what the sea level rises will be, so all policy is predicated on that estimate right through the chain.
As an example, one of the conferences I recently attended was hosted by an international firm of consultants spreading exactly the same doom that Mary was and recommending expensive sea defences.
As it happened I had downloaded the Proudman figures for our area and knew the history anyway (no sea level movement in our area for 150 years) so I challenged the consultant discreetly at lunch time who openly admitted the figures they were using were nonsense, but those were the ones they were told to use by their client-one of the uk agencies. As a representative from the agency was there I mentioned to him the figures were nonsense to which he cheerfully agreed, but pointed out it was the figures they were told to use by Defra. As the (unpaid) Defra representative I knew that Defra had instructed ME that the levels being used were the ‘correct’ ones even though I had challenged them in writing as to the science behind it.
So if you don’t play the game you won’t get the business or the grant or the job.
Someone else here mentioned that the public have an attention span of rwo weeks. This can also be applied to various agencies- unless past reports have been digitised they won’t be used, either because they arent in an easy to use format for computer modelling, or because they have been physically permanently archived-there is very little room for paper records. So any report more than a few years old is likely to be unavailable.
The system is madness and self perpetuating but a lot of people are making a good living out of it.
TonyB

Graeme Rodaughan
December 30, 2008 1:36 pm

@Mary Hinge
Mary Hinge (04:03:02) :
Graeme Rodaughan (13:45:42) :
Especially given that sea level rise appears to be flatlining or even decelerating. http://i39.tinypic.com/2u4q13o.jpg
Words of advise Graeme, try to use up to date data when stating your case.

WRT Mary’s Graphs and Ric Werme’s ref “Ric Werme (18:56:34) :” contribution. The graphs seem to describe an absolute rise over a “0” point defined around 1998 to 2000 (depends on graph). The key point is that in all the linked graphs the growth rate flatlines from approx 2006.
WRT using up to date data – that’s a fair point.
The graph you used is most likely plucked from some denial site and is the cherry picked graph using the end point during the last strong La Nina.
Speculation?
Next time try using up to date data from a reliable source, you obviously don’t do this and are content spewing out the usual garbage your ilk are inclined to do.
Spewing, Garbage, Ilk – (G wag’s finger). Now now Mary – keep it clean. Does the use of Ad Hom attacks, add any credibility to your position, or intellectual rigour to your argument? You really only bring yourself into disrepute by using such language.
This is the up to date graph from the same source as your outdated link http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_global.jpg
Notice anything (apart from the fact it now runs to October instead of February. See how the La Nina effect has now declined and the mean SL is now 1cm higher than your graph.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global.jpg – Shows a peak in 2006 followed by a drop.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_ns_global.jpg – Basically a flatline from the beginning of 2006.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_global.jpg – Drop off from mid 2006.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg – Flatline from 2007 – then dropping.
Summary – Looks like the sea level as topped out from 2006 – that’s now 3 years without significant growth. Each year of delayed growth in sea levels means that the sea level increase must accelerate to catch up with IPCC predictions, and the predictions of AGW Advocates such as James Hansen.
You mention in your posts a lot of pro AGW scientists nt reading their data ec. You have already shown that the only data you use are from the usual sites, conspiracy theorists etc. Try reading some real science, some recent peer reviewed papers perhaps, then you will see that AGW is real and happening.
The problem that I have with the data, and especially the land based temperature measurements is the apparent lack of rigour, and transparency WRT the data handling and methods of interpretation of that data. If a scientist want’s to be taken seriously – that could do the work and ensure that their data and methods are clearly expressed and publically available.
What’s so hard about that. And where is the clear description of the GISS data, both raw, and finished and with all interpretive methods clearly expressed?
To quote David “perhaps you might point me to just one scientific paper that you have published which corrects their work, or even just one scientific paper by an Australian Climate Sceptic on anthropogenic climate change in a peer reviewed journal in the last decade.
Lets change the request to “Point me to just one scientific paper ANYONE has published that corrects their work, or even just one published paper by ANY AGW sceptic in a peer reviewed Journal in the last decade”.

Just One? – Try this from the Journal of Geophysical Research http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf which raises issues with the data used to measure land based temperature.
Apologies to Steve Keohane (07:57:08) : – It looks like your original post was the correct one – The graphs are of Mean Sea Level and seem to be a measurement of sea level difference vs some benchmark (not clearly defined on the website).

Ron de Haan
December 30, 2008 3:15 pm

In reference to the Green Riviera opening photo the following:
Joseph D’Aleo has made a report about two Greenland Radar Stations which are buried by snow. The rate of growth of the Greenland Icecap by snowfall more than compensates for the ice loss during summer melting.
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2008/12/old-dew-line-radars-in-greenland-once.html
Download the PDF via this link.
It’s great to have a “visual” of what really is happening.

Graeme Rodaughan
December 30, 2008 3:50 pm

Mary Hinge (15:33:26) :

It is still a relatively young science but the equipment at our disposal means that great progress is being made.

What, like a child in a kindergarten?
When then, will Climate Science be mature enough to be used in Public Policy?

Les Johnson
December 30, 2008 4:21 pm

Ron de Haan (15:15:07) :
I read that at Icecap, on the ice build up on Greenland.
I calculate, based on 2.16 million sq km of Greenland, and 5 cm of accumulation per year, that 108 cubic km of ice is added to Greenland every year.

anna v
December 30, 2008 10:36 pm

Pamela Gray (11:03:16) :
Who else here has direct knowledge and actual experience with the political and turf motivated peer review and grant review process? I do. While at a major research facility with a stellar reputation, I experienced both. I loved the political “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” grant review process.
I was working with particle high energy physics. Most of my working years were at a time where grants were given to agencies and not researchers, the agency then distributed the money to institutes and projects. Lobbying took place at that time, mainly with politicians to get a large enough pie for the institute. There was no pretense of checking peer review etc. Just a general push to get as much as one could. Knowing MPs ( in my country) could help, to gauge the level of political.
As a result the politics of high energy physics were confined on the committees that decided what experiment was going to run, who was going to head a large collaboration and stuff like that. The process you describe of back scratching was there, but at a polite and on level with scientific integrity. Scientific reputation played a great role, Nobel prizes were important in weighting decisions. I suppose the integrity was necessary because you could not fool colleagues the way you can fool politicians and the public.
When the grant system came in , with the EU and the way grants are given, at first we thought it was an improvement, not to have to find handles on politicians to get money but fight for it with proposals and justifications. I now think that it is the downfall of science, because of what you describe.
I think the scientific community should seriously go back to the old system of financing research: universities and institutes to get adequate grants. There may be infighting, but it will not create a global community of “scientific fools”, because each institute will be independent in its decisions.

kim
December 31, 2008 5:03 am

Graeme (15:50:49) Easy answer for your last question, G; when it can survive audit. Say, something like a legislative post audit to see if the money spent accomplished its purpose.
There is a great reckoning ahead. The exaggerators and demonizers of CO2 are bankrupt.
=========================================

December 31, 2008 5:18 am

Pamela Gray, anna v,
Who else here has direct knowledge and actual experience with the political and turf motivated peer review and grant review process? I do. While at a major research facility with a stellar reputation, I experienced both. I loved the political “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” grant review process.
You have both have described what I suspected must be happening. I was wondering what the mechanics must be that can drive statistics / conclusions that seems to support a particular viewpoint, yet if anyone else looks at the data, other, simpler explanations are all too obvious. The IPCC summaries are a great example. Take a lot of information and research, and come to conclusions that are not supported by the papers cited, many times over strenuous objections by the scientists themselves! It’s like being in a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. If someone is not inclined to read all the underlying research, it’s easy to take the summaries at face value, but as the facts come to light, it makes you wonder, who are these people, and what do they really want? What is the motivation for such biased interpretation? How can some scientists use blatantly faulty statistical methods and still get “peer reviewed” with nary a question asked? I’ll bet there are thousands of examples of bad data and pay to play science leading to prescribed conclusions and damaging public policy. We really can’t expect the average politician to sort out science, they are not equipped, to say the least. They must be given real facts and evidence, which is clearly not the case. And the problem goes well beyond climate science, into health care, transportation, the military, you name it.
I think this would be a great subject for a new blog called “Broken Science”, “The End of Science”, or some other (your suggestion here) name. Here researchers could post their experiences with the political aspects of the process, cite examples of false conclusions knowingly submitted, and suggest methods of how to fix the research financing and control system to prevent such biases (and probably a whole lot of bad data) from cluttering and ultimately destroying the knowledge base. Discussions of the political processes involved in essentially managing conclusions for political purposes could come to light.
In the world of climate science, more of a double blind approach would help, having “modelers” write their code, then have another independent panel run the simulations and test results against reality would be another suggestion. Since model parameters are so well known by observation ahead of time, this should have no impact on the quality of the model output (!). Obviously having data and methods available with all published papers would allow replication / verification by independent parties. Anyone so sure of their conclusions would welcome independent verification since it serves to bolster their viewpoint. er, uh, hmmm. Well, you see my point.
Climate science is due for a very thorough independent audit by independent statisticians and scientists from other fields. With public policy in the works around the globe based on a CO2 / temperature link that is so obviously strong in one direction (temperature drives CO2), and yet so utterly weak in the other (CO2 drives temperature), this science needs to get “unbroken” as soon as possible. A simple method would be to start the audit with the IPCC itself, i.e, are the main conclusions supported by the references cited, are the policies at the IPCC conducive to independent conclusions? Then audit the temperature record and other key databases, then audit the papers most often cited, or most heavily weighted in the conclusions, then work your way down from there. To fund such an audit, I would propose a temporary shift away from further climate research (but not data collection) while the audit is underway. Not a suspension, but a significant reduction to help shift resources to a group of independent auditors. Once a clean bill of health is established (not bloody likely), pour on money for research that can be carried out using an independent, scientific approach, WITH quality control.
Any thoughts on such a “broken science” blog?
Michael S.

December 31, 2008 5:54 am

kim (05:03:38) :
Ooohhh, I think I like that for a title for the new blog I mentioned… “The Great Reckoning”… Any other suggestions?