WUWT readers may recall that Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog discovery of UNEP’s use of a Wikipedia “hockey Stick” graphic by “Hanno”, was the subject of last week’s blog postings.
The Yamal data hockey stick controversy overshadowed it, and much of the focus has been there recently.
The discovery of a Wikipedia graphic in the UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium must have been embarrassing as it shows the sort of sloppy science that is going into “official” publications.
In this case, the United Nations simply grabbed an image from Wikipedia that supported the view they wanted to sell. The problem with the graph in the upper right of page 5 of the UNEP report is that it itself has not been peer reviewed nor has it originated from a peer reviewed publication, having its inception at Wikipedia.
And then there’s the problem of the citation as “Hanno 2009” who (up until this story broke) was an anonymous Wikipedia contributor.
Yet UNEP cited the graph as if it was a published and peer reviewed work as “Hanno 2009″.
Here’s my screencap of the page from the UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium report from last week
In this case, the United Nations simply grabbed an image from Wikipedia that supported the view they wanted to sell.
The hockey stick, based on tree ring proxies has met an inconveniently timed death it seems.
It appears now that somebody at the United Nations must have gotten the message from blogland, becuase there has been a change in the graphics on page 5.
Below is page 5 as it appears in the UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium today:
It’s gone. It has been replaced with the familiar GISS land-ocean record, not quite a hockey stick, but close enough.
You can see the GISS graph from the GISTEMP web page right here, oddly the UN used the 2005 version (citing Hansen et al 2005) rather than the 2009 version of the graph, seen below. Might it be that pesky downturn at the end of the graph? Or maybe they are just Google challenged?
It sure would be nice if such publications could display animated GIFS, for example this one showing two different vintages of GISS data:
Maybe climate blogs can convince the UN to change their graph yet again.
Thanks to sharp eyed WUWT reader Lawrie (of Sydney Australia) for pointing out the change made to the UNEP document.
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Smokey: I don’t think R.R. Kampen’s main hobby is skating.
I will no longer be purchasing Apple products. It was bad enough Gore was given a position on the board and shares at far less than their market value and then used his horror-comedy documentary to advertise Apple products thereby help increase the stock price. Apple and Gore are not having my money.
I asked the United Nations Environment Program to provide a comment about the Wikipedia graph, and received on Friday the following statement from Peter Gilruth, director of the UNEP’s Division of Early Warning and Assessment:
Dear Mr. Ambler,
Thank you for bringing the issue of the graph on page 5 to my attention. Mr. Steiner has asked me to respond in my capacity as Director of the Division responsible for the production of the Science Compendium.
Indeed you spotted a graph that does not belong in this Compendium. In brief an error occurred, whereby a ‘place holder graph’ during the layout stage of the report was not replaced by the actual graph and correct reference intended for this section. Regrettable as such an occurrence is, this simply comes down to human error during the final layout phase of the report.
Our team spotted this following the launch of the report in Washington. As the printed version of the report was only delivered a few hours before the launch, we could only rectify this in the following days.
The correct graph and reference have now been inserted in the online version and an errata slip has been prepared for all the printed copies to be disseminated in the coming weeks.
The Compendium’s objective was to provide an overview of the latest science and thus the editorial team was tasked with identifying relevant and peer reviewed research up to August 2009.
Notwithstanding the inclusion of an erroneous graph, which has now been rectified, we believe that the Compendium does provide access to vital research to a broader audience and then can help to inform public debate and policy makers.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Gilruth
I found Mr. Gilruth’s response to be evasive. Whose decision was it to click on Wikipedia in the first place? Why was a Wikipedia graph ever entered into a UN climate report? Worse, the graph replacement hadn’t taken place as of yesterday morning, which then brought to Mr. Gilruth’s attention. His response:
Thanks for the message. The site has been updated with the correct version. Note that the process has been a slow because internet connections tend to be a bit slow here in Nairobi.
I found this to be even more evasive, so I decided to take a more sustained look at the report. I found similar problems: more attribution issues, factual errors, distortions, etc.
Anyone so inclined is welcome to see the whole sorry tale here:
http://talkingabouttheweather.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/un-climate-report-rife-with-errors/
Regards
As the Universe expanded after the Big Bang, it cooled and condensed matter.
As the AGW and IPCC expanded after the Big Prediction, it too is cooling off, and condensing into primordial politics.
Faster than previously imagined, resorting to Wiki graphs.
No one wll ever notice, he said.
Carbon Credit Shares, 10 cents cheap. Get ’em while theyr’e hot, before they condense into roadside litter.
“”” Michael (09:38:44) :
Apple Quits Chamber Of Commerce Over Climate Change
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/apple-quits-chamber-of-co_n_310301.html
You would think a company as scientific as Apple would be able to take a non-biased look at the actual climate data and give a logical response. But alas, its not in their social interest. Oh well, how many socialist companys down and how many socialist companies to go? “””
Well anyone who would think that somehow Silicon Valley would be a bastion of free enterprise, and perhaps conservative thought, clearly has never worked in Silicon Valley.
It is Silicon Valley companies that keep alive the H1B visa scam, that imports low cost laborers from the third world; but unfortunately does not give them immigrant (green card) status. Legally they are here to do a specific task for specific period of time, for a specific company, and none of those variables is permitted to change. If the job gets cancelled the indentured servant is required to return to where they originated. H1B visas belong to the company; not the worker, and like Student visas; they are never supposed to be convertible into green card immigration visas.
But then, these sivalley “entrepeneurial” companies are quick to make campaign donations to politicians who will vote to maintain taxpayer gravy trains for them; like subsidies for alternative energy companies.
PG&E, the local utility, is heavily invested in “renewable energy”, such as hydro, wind, PEsolar etc, and the taxpayer support that they get from lobbying Congress animals; so PG&E was an early quitter from the Chamber of Commerce (whose membership is tens of thousands of US businesses; so PG&E and Apple will not be missed.
Anybody who is familiar with the history of Steve Jobs and Apple, is hardly surprised that they want to take their ball and go home.
Some of the wealthiest people in Sivalley, are as leftist as the current teleprompter reader in chief; it works out great when they have their hands out for taxpayer subsidies, such as the half billion to a wacky PV solar business. To read their publicity, you would think they have discovered a way to get more Watts per square metre than old Sol delivers on earth; well that yarn helped them get the gravy train money. (I happen to know someone who works for that company).
So get used to it; there are more people besides the Illegal invader supporters, who are happy to swill at the public trough, and even though they may have big Wall Street names; they aren’t any more entrepeneurial than Fanny Mae, and Freddie Mac.
But it’s a free country (for a while longer) so if you are apalled by the actions of these companies; don’t patronize them; it’s their pocket book that dictates company policy to them, and if they can fill it from the taxpayer coffers they will.
George E. Smith (13:59:09),
Re Apple’s backing away from the Chamber of Commerce: isn’t Al Gore on Apple’s Board of Directors? If so, that would explain everything.
Ok, I’m looking at the blinky graph… is it me or revisionist data that the annual mean for 1998/1999 seems to be different for the two graphs? Why would the annual mean change after the year is over?
Anthony, your message is getting through.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/un_quietly_scrubs_embattled_gr.html
RR Kampen (07:01:15) :
“Dont you think this is far better representation of Global Temperatures or at least NH temperatures than Briffa’s one tree somewhere in Siberia, which has been depended on by the IPCC?”
Yes. Fortunately that tree showed the same sort of figure as a host of different proxy or non-proxy data, which is where the IPCC depends on also.
How can that tree and the graph made from it be representative of anything at all, when it isn’t even representative of the measurement stations around it?
See:
Juraj V. (10:04:09) :
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222206740006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222236310000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdata.giss.nasa.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Fgistemp%2Fgistemp_station.py%3Fid%3D222234720005%26data_set%3D1%26num_neighbors%3D1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222202920005&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222237110000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222208910006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Crazy Kerry:
http://www.northstarnational.com/2009/10/06/john-kerry-awesome-recession-helping-environment/
Not quite related, but:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26174721-12250,00.html
The Aussie climate debate is heating up politically. This is the history in a nutshell:
Labor (the left wing party in Australia – would be considered socialist by US standards) is in power. They entered their ETS bill and it was rejected once by Parliament. If rejected again this would hand Rudd (the Prime Minister of Australia and head of the Labor party) a double dissolution trigger. This would allow him to dissolve both Houses of Parliament and call another election (which Labor would likely win in a landslide due to the dissarray in the oppostiion party).
Rudd wants to appear to be a leader on the world stage (notice the attendance during his UN speech?… admittedly he was after the Gaddafi tirade) and is determined to push the ETS on Australia before Copenhagen so that he can grandstand and claim the Aussies are leading the charge (of lemmings presumably).
The opposition (Liberals – still left wing by US political standards, and pretty much on the same spot on the political spectrum as the new Labor these days, but I digress) is split on how to deal with the second coming of the ETS legislation (which Rudd choses to dub CPRS – Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme… don’t get me started).
Labor is pushing the issue, because they know it drives a wedge between Liberals who want to out-and-out reject the bill again because they don’t believe the IPCC “science” and those like party leader Turnbull who wants to put amendments to the bill and negotiate with Labor.
Turnbull is between a rock and a hard place. He has openly said that not supporting CC legislation of some type is political suicide (polls unfortunately show that the majority of Aussies believe the IPCC hype). He also knows that the only other alternative is for Labor to do a deal with the devil (the Greens) to pass a much more harmfull anti-industry ETS variant. Turnbull claims big industry is backing his stance – of course they would. Better him than the Greens to form the legislation (lesser of two evils).
I see Andy Pitman (of self-professed IPCC fame) was active on the blog.
PS> The sensible Liberal members want to delay the ETS legislation until after Copenhagen. I guess if we are going to put this legislation through, they say, we want to make sure the rest of the lemmings are with us. Multi-lateral legislation would be a lot less harmful for the Australian economy which is heavily reliant on energy and energy-based exports.
Mike Borgelt (13:43:41) : Smokey: I don’t think R.R. Kampen’s main hobby is skating. Skating around the evidence?
P Gosselin (05:32:06) :
Thank the UN for a lesson in Latin…
A corrigendium for the compendium.
(Did I spell that right?)
Sorry: it’s “corrigendum”.
Their latin is as good as their science.
Re: Alexej Buergin (13:05:22) :
“Skating (racing) is very popular in Holland, and they have huge (long track) ice rinks for that.”
—
Correct, and many (every major city has one). Sven Kramer won the world title for the third time in a row this year and Holland produces the most world champions of all countries in the world. They train on Dutch rinks.
So I make good use of the rinks. But I prefer long distance over canals and lakes.
Re: “And last winter it was so cold there the canals were freezing as they were in the time of Bruegel:”
In fact average temperature last winter was fairly low (30-percentile) due to lack of mild days. All other winter parameters put this winter at normal to slightly above normal. In normal to even mild winters some skating is always possible. Every year before 1988; one out of two years between 1988 and 2000; once in three or four years this century (January 2007 would have been nice for any April month).
As the link says: ‘Dutch are rediscovering their heritage’, so true. An entire generation now exists without this heritage. For the first time since people cut bones to skate on.
Warming in Holland is stronger than the global average (some people here might have guessed this already!). There are explanations for this, too.
General remark: I find it a bit strange that people who don’t live here and are even so ignorant as to not know the country is built flat with skating rinks, are telling me how winters are here. Well, I’m telling you as is the normal thing; just listen and learn and ask questions if you don’t understand, okay? Like I will listen, learn and ask questions if I don’t understand when I absorb info about the locality of other authors in this world.
Re: “Mike Borgelt (13:43:41) : Smokey: I don’t think R.R. Kampen’s main hobby is skating. ”
—
‘Think’? Impressive. Well, just know it is – or call me a liar, okay?
Smokey (11:12:05) :
But all is not lost. He could move to Southern California to ice skate.
Or Phoenix Arizona… I once got to watch The Great One – Gretzky, in a game there. A magic moment I will always cherish. Nothing like sunning yourself by the pool, a stroll past the cactus garden with a “tall cool one” in hand, and an evening at the Hockey Rink… Heck, even Florida has hockey…
Hockey? Pah! Try hurling…now that hurts (Yes I was foolish enough to play it).
Someone ought to inform Schellnhuber that it’s (North) Americans who are embarasssing and forcing the IPCC to correct its reports.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6240611/Americans-are-illiterate-about-climate-change-claims-expert.html
Sophistry :
Fallacious argument with the intent to deceive. ( a fallacious argument )
This is the game. Sophistry is how we have been brought to this point with this AGW scam.
The only way to undo this dark magic is to be thorough in exposing the SOPHISTS and their fallacious arguments. Only this way we can avoid a future of carbon slavery. So I refer those who are interested in freedom and human rights, to my original post and to the subsequent replies it received.
The post has to be considered in its entirety or not at all. The two negative replies it received by Gallon and Smith are good examples of pure sophistry at work and if you follow the link supplied by Adam Gallon , http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/04/in-defense-of-the-greenhouse-effect/ you will find a clear example of sophistry. For example comparing the atmosphere to a blanket is a fallacious argument with the intent to deceive. So now its not a greenhouse effect, its a blanket effect. This is still a fraud no matter how you slice it.
Using circular logic to pile one falsehood on top of another is known as pathological lying. George E Smith’s reply is another blatant, yet ineffective example of sophistry and a cursory glance back to my original post will expose this crude attempt to take me out of context. Then he proceeds to correct my implied ignorance with my own points and concludes his post with the signature gobbledegook employed by all sophists.
Note: sophists in politics, more commonly referred to as spin doctors (see Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) are professional liars who are paid for with your taxes. They are paid by you to deceive you.
It is a human right to emit CO2. The trade in carbon credits is nothing less a trade in human rights. It is a slave trade and we are the slaves.
Yet, assuming the official figures are correct (which is highly unlikely) the entire carbon foot print of the whole of humanity is a mere 4.1 ppm per year.
It is time to get serious and learn the tricks employed by these AGW wizards because if we do not learn their game we cannot play and if we cannot play, we certainly cannot win.
This free e-book .pdf is a good starting point.
[snip – self promotion ]
In the mean time, earliest snow in history in Idaho:
http://www.ktvb.com/news/nearyou/woodriver/ktvbn-oct0509-wood_river_power.1e96b181a.html
SKI RESORT OPENS.
Earliest opening in 40 years
http://www.denverpost.com/extremes/ci_13498572
And even here in Florida (DAB, right next to the super speedway) we had a record “cold” on October 1.
RR Kampen (00:55:01)
The canals, lakes and ponds in the Netherlands are part of a complex infrastructure of waterways that are continuously pumped to maintain the balance between salt water infiltration, to dispose of sewage and wastewater, to provide cooling and drinking water, and for the larger canals as transport routes. These have no doubt changed considerably over the years, much of the heat to home and factories provided by the Groningen gas field ending up in the water courses.
aylamp (09:59:58) :
RR Kampen (00:55:01)
The canals, lakes and ponds in the Netherlands .. have no doubt changed considerably over the years, much of the heat to home and factories provided by the Groningen gas field ending up in the water courses.
So in other words, there has been Anthropogenic Warming, due to the causes you have mentioned. The Heat Island effect in urban areas is another way to produce localised heating and irrigation to cause localised cooling, as in parts of California and elsewhere.
But this is not due to global warming as per the AGW hypothesis, adopted by the IPCC and espoused by others, due to the increase CO2 in the atmosphere.
The ice-core records of Greenland, on the other hand, very accurately measure the temperature down to the year in decade intervals, continuously over a hundred thousand years. They are far more likely to accurately record widespread climate changes than the observation of ice skating in the canals of Holland made by RR Kampen. The heat from the ice skating rinks are also probably pumped into the canals to cool them (the rinks) and warm the canals.
According to these ice-core records it has been warmer for most of our current interglacial period, the Holocene, than the present. When these records show warmth that has lasted for centuries and even thousands of years, it is far more likely to indicate a widespread climatic phenomena than the freezing of canals in Holland, (which happened last year), or an individual tree in some part of Siberia, which had its own individual history quite distinct even from nearby trees.
So your willingness RR Kampen to accept the evidence of this mighty tree in the Blade of Briffa over the Greenland ice core records, just because it agrees with the IPCC’s evidence, which maybe similarly faulty, is unscientific in the extreme.
Re: aylamp (09:59:58) :
“The canals, lakes and ponds in the Netherlands are part of a complex infrastructure of waterways that are continuously pumped to maintain the balance between salt water infiltration, to dispose of sewage and wastewater, to provide cooling and drinking water, and for the larger canals as transport routes. These have no doubt changed considerably over the years, much of the heat to home and factories provided by the Groningen gas field ending up in the water courses.”
—
Do you live in Holland, or are you from the States telling me – ice skater, fisherman – what the waters in MY country look like??
Let me tell you, okay?
Over the past twenty years, sweet water in Holland got cleaner everywhere.
And the pumping of warm waste water has been drastically reduced. They tend to let it cool down in pools a bit first before releasing it into the canals (never in lakes!!!).
Anyway, if ice is no measure of a warming climate, maybe temperatures are. They rise. The number of frost days decreases (obviously). It’s as simple as that.
A check on increased urbanization using a comparison for stations spread over the country – urban, rural, airport, island in the Waddenzee – learns that warming over the past thirty years has been almost homogeneous across all of the country, though slightly more in the northeast. In this region urbanization happens to be minimal or negative over the past thirty years.
—
Re: Richard (11:27:21) :
“So your willingness RR Kampen to accept the evidence of this mighty tree in the Blade of Briffa over the Greenland ice core records, just because it agrees with the IPCC’s evidence, which maybe similarly faulty, is unscientific in the extreme.”
Your rushing to conclusions about my convictions is actually astounding. Flabbergasting. Takes my breath away, just like those people telling me what my country is like though they might not even be able to point at it on a globe!
Didn’t I mention I accept the vast body of evidence outside of that tree – like IPCC accepts a vast body of evidence outside of that tree? Forget the tree. There is VASTLY more evidence of warming. Use it, or discredit it. Concentrating on one tree is never going to let you disprove (A)GW. Never.
RR Kampen – I doubt that anyone will dispute 30 years of warming. The temperature has been going in a cycle over at least the last 200 years, of about 30 years warming alternating with about 30 years cooling. We’ve just finished the last 30 years warming, now we’re into a cooling phase.
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/GlobalTemperature_PDOPhaseTrends.JPG
I can’t tell you whether we will get the full 30 years of cooling, or whether it will cool more or less than it has in the past, because Neither I nor (as far as I can tell) anyone else knows the mechanisms. But it most certainly is not driven by CO2!! My guess is that it will cool a bit more this time, because the sun, which was rather active during the 20th century, is now looking rather inactive. Of course, that guess is dependent on the sun remaining inactive for a while – and again we don’t know the mechanisms.