It seems no matter where you look, “hockey stick” shapes pop out of data related to climate. Today, the most extraordinary day in climate science seen in quite some time, was no exception.
And, the day is not over. But honestly I’m too tired to continue. Thus I’m going to present the dataset gleaned today in raw form, but without the final endpoint. There’s no smoothing nor splicing of dissimilar datasets, but granted it is not a complete dataset. I’ll have complete data tomorrow.
Readers will recognize that even though the endpoint has not been established, the conclusion from the graph is clear. We are living in times of extraordinary data, never before seen. It’s accelerating, and worse than we thought.
UPDATE: the final number at midnight Nov 20th, 2009 was 187,988 hits.
Sometimes, there is irony.
In other news, WUWT’s post on the CRU data hack was the number one post on WordPress today, beating out CNN, People magazine, and other well known media outlet posts.
I wish to offer my sincerest thanks to the WUWT moderation team. Thanks also to readers who spread the word and participated in the largest ever thread.
‘Circling the wagons’ indeed! Consider this paragraph from Real Climate’s response to this delightful contretemps.
“More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.”
Clumsy, clumsy attempt at legerdemain. If you don’t want to deal with what is said, then misdirect the audience to consider what is not said, a set which is always vastly larger. And here, what is not said is what no one in your opponents’ camp ever claimed; it is a straw man, an unrecognizable and crude caricature of sceptics’ concerns. The next step in this tango for two left feet would be to compare your opponents to 9/11 Truthers or to Obama Birthers.
But perhaps the construction of straw men can prove revelatory of the ‘texture’ of thinking of the constructor. In Depth Psychology this is called ‘projection’; the projector here begins and ends with notions of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘paranoia’.
De te fabula narratur?
In between this framing vision of delusive mentation are sandwiched allusions to specific absences. George Soros ghosts in– there is no evidence of his existence, we are told, in any of the CRU material; he does not ‘nefariously fund’ climate research. But surely he *does* fund climate research, nefariously or otherwise. Another piece of crude misdirection, in this case deployed by exploding a highly connotative stink bomb of an adverb in front of a demurely well-behaved, denotative verb.
Of course, Big Oil *does* ‘nefariously fund’ the AGW deniers.
There is in the leaked material ‘no admission that global warming is a hoax’. But who would expect one? For Phil Jones at al to be hoaxers, they would have to believe consciously that the science they are ‘pushing’ is false; a liar has to be a truth-knower. But surely there are degrees of belief and of acknowledgement of truth. It seems to me entirely possible that men the likes of the Team, men who were trained up in an appreciation for scientific method, might harbor half-acknowledged doubts about the fundamental truthfulness of the hypothesis they have vested their whole careers in, and which has provided them with a privleged lifestyle (all that hectic, carbon-spewingjetting to spots like Tahiti). What does Phil Jones think of the validity of CO2-driven global warming when he wakes up at three in the morning?
‘There is no evidence of falsifying data.’ Really? Perhaps no ‘dispositive evidence’, as the lawyers would say. But surely there is circumstantial evidence.
Enough. I recommend to one and all a reading–or better, a fiftieth re-reading– of George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’.
Anthony, you need a scissor lift for the end of the graph!
Brent in Calgary
Excellent work, congratulations! Keep it up!
Congratulations to all. I haven’t had that much fun in years.
I’m surprised you all have noses left, after leaning into the grindstone that hard.
Well done.
Chris Wright (03:55:00) :
What will be unprecedented ia if Geoffrey Lean gets dropped.
Thank you. Hats off to Climate Audit, Ice Cap, Junk Science, Climate Depot, Greenie Watch, SPPI, Watts UP With That, CO2 Science and many other sites and the men and women behind the the movement to expose this fraud.
As Tax Payer and I who support real climate research, I thank all of you.
It’s time to investigate NASA, EPA, and IPCC to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.
Set My CO2 Free.
My Brother suggests that Academic Charges on all the Phd’s (Pile Higher and
Deeper) be brought through their issuing Universities.
Because the nature of the granting of the Phd requires certain adherence to academic integrity and “Lux et veritas” (Light and Truth), there is (technically) a method to withdraw the Phd based on such actions.
I think if a couple of “Prominent” types lost their Phd’s that would be wonderful.
(Of course, this is less likely to happen than Obama getting up and announcing that “Health Care is Dead” and “We have the best private system in the world, why change it?” HAHAHAHA!
I wonder why and how RealClimate censors allowed this to appear…. see the response from Gavin Schmidt here (#440).
Dear Gavin and Colleagues,
I can absolutely agree with you that breaking into any computer system and obtaining private information is against the law and considered to be an unethical way for getting the details of something. In your post, you try to minimise the impact of the recent information leak by saying that it will not have any effect on the current state of climate science.
Sure, it won’t have any measurable effect but it reveals perfectly your way of thinking. You can call me a skeptic, a lot of people do so, but to label someone with skepticism is absolutely unnecessary in case of science. One thing must be clear for anyone: you clearly believe in the theory of anthropogenic global warming, instead of continuous criticism towards your own thoughts and belief. The lack of ‘healthy skepticism’ in your way of thinking is obvious even from most of the posts on this site. You often commit well-known logical fallacies, such as referring to an authority, talking about a scientific consensus (argumentum ad populum), and many others in order to show your viewpoints as the only acceptable ones. Mentioning a consensus is pointless, because reality is not determined by popular vote.
In the recent past, one of your common argument was the small number of peer-reviewed publications on the skeptic side. Now it is evident that in some cases you prevented the possible appearance of controversial papers in the most respected journals. Of course your case is not unique, as an economist I’ve seen group-think and censorship in my own field, too. Please avoid such dishonesty, because with such behaviour you risk that your credibility will be completely destroyed in the coming years.
Furthermore, I and maybe lots of reasonable people would highly appreciate if any author or commentator on this site aren’t going to use the word ‘denier’ for a person who do not accept the theory of man-made global warming. As I’ve seen it in recent years, nobody denies the fact that the globe had been warmed significantly since the begginning of the 20th century. The exact amount of warming remains uncertain, but the direction of change is clear. Our question is only about the role of man. It is evident that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but it is also evident that CO2 is only a minor component of the total greenhouse effect in our atmosphere. CO2 molecules can only absorb and re-emit heat on relatively narrow bandwiths of infrared radiation. The doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels can only cause a negligible increase in global temperatures.
The validity of the whole anthropogenic global warming theory depends on the existence of positive feedbacks, mainly caused by water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas. Theoretically, water vapor feedback relies on the Clausius–Clapeyron equation. If the atmosphere warms, it can and it will hold more water vapor – the absolute humidity will increase. However, 60 years of global radiosonde measurements shows that the absolute humidity in the middle troposphere is decreasing. The problem with the AGW theory is nothing else than there is no evidence for it. We have two empirically observed facts: global temperature has risen by about 0.6-0.7°c in the 20th century, and CO2 levels are also increasing due to the combustion of fossil fuels. But we know that CO2 alone couldn’t have caused the observed amount of warming.
In the 4th IPCC report we can read an argument that the observed warming cannot be explained by natural variability, only when we include the effects of increasing amount of greenhouse gases (amplified by positive feedbacks). Climate models rely on the assumption that most of the warming observed in the last 30-40 years have been caused by anthropogenic factors. A model which is based on a certain theory cannot prove the very same theory, this is also a common logical fallacy. The argument about “observed warming cannot be explained by natural variability” has another problems too. Literally it means that “we cannot think of anything better” – argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Kindest regards from Hungary,
Adam Soereg
PS: Really sorry for any grammatic mistakes, English is not my native language though.
In the old days, this would have been settled with a rail, a bag of feathers, and a pot of tar. GK
Alleged CRU Emails – 1255558867.txt
This is a must read, they can`t figure out why their models don`t agree with reality, (it is a travesty says Trenberth).
> Kevin Trenberth wrote: > > > > > Hi all > > > > > Well I have my own article on where the heck is global > > > > > warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have > > > > > broken records the past two days for the coldest days on > > > > > record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days > > > > > was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the > > > > > previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F > > > > > and also a record low, well below the previous record low. > > > > > This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game > > > > > was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below > > > > > freezing weather). > > > > > Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change > > > > > planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. /Current Opinion in > > > > > Environmental Sustainability/, *1*, 19-27, > > > > > doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [PDF] > > > > > (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.) > > > > > The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at > > > > > the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
Congratulations to Mr Watt and all the mods for a tremendous public service.
Upthread, a parallel was drawn with the MPs expenses in Britain – it started out as a lot of little stories that suddenly caught fire when the Daily Telegraph bought the data and put 30 researchers onto it.
With the CRU files in the blogosphere – and I assume a lot more is up someone’s sleeve – it will be impossible for the MSM to ignore this for much longer. Delingpole made a really good point – almost all of their contacts are AWG lobbyists, scientists or sympathisers – no wonder they are feeling a) stupid, b) compromised and c) lost for what to do next.
Poor Andy Revkin seems to be suffering from cognitive dissonance. From today’s NYT
“Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.”
Who, exactly, among the ‘climate sceptics’ has claimed that the leaked material shows a ‘conspiracy’?
That is going to tick off “the Team”. Congratulations.
Jim
We’ve already had the utterly tasteless article by Geoffrey Lean in the Daily Telegraph, linking the tragic floods in Cumbria with AGW…doesn’t it stink?
Well done Anthony…keep up the good work.
Joe Romm at Climate Progress also has a hockey stick.
I checked the last eight threads of his The most recent was about the CRU info release. It had 42 comments.
In reverse order the previous threads had the following number of comments
2, 2,2,,3,7 and 2. The CRU topic which he cut and pasted from Real climate had more than the previous 7 topic combined. 42 is a very high number for Climate Progress. People into science don’t go there. It is mostly a leftist site to promote heavy taxes and government dominated “green” projects. They can’t tell us what green jobs are except all jobs at GE are green.
This site has 100 times as many visitors and comments.
Steven Mosher @ur momisugly 00:35:05
‘The CRUtape Letters’….utterly brilliant.
Anthony will be getting a $100. donation from me, and I will be purchasing my own weather station from his stash.
Meanwhile, all Anthony did was to say,
“Whoa! Can we really measure temperature accurately?” and proceeded to try to find out.
The lack of foregone conclusions in the studies posted here, the constant openness to any and all questions, and the lack of a political agenda is what has attracted many to this site as a source of dependable sanity, a refuge.
Thanks Anthony, now get some sleep.
Fred @ur momisugly 06:44:14
I wondered about that too.
Alleged CRU Emails – 1249045162.txt
This is bloody scandalous.
Hi, Phil,
> >
> > Yes, Friday-Saturday I noticed that ClimateFraudit had renewed their
> > interest in you. I was thinking about sending an email of
> > sympathy, but
> > I was busy preparing for a quick trip to Hawaii – I left Monday
> > morningand flew out Tuesday evening and am now in the Houston
> > airport on my way
> > home.
> >
> > Data that we can’t release is a tricky thing here at NCDC.
> > Periodically,Tom Karl will twist my arm to release data that would
> > violate agreements
> > and therefore hurt us in the long run, so I would prefer that you
> > don’tspecifically cite me or NCDC in this.
> >
> > But I can give you a good alternative. You can point to the
> > Peterson-Manton article on regional climate change workshops. All
> > thoseworkshops resulted in data being provided to the author of the
> > peer-reviewed paper with a strict promise that NONE of the data
> > would be
> > released. So far as far as I know, we have all lived up to that
> > agreement – myself with the Caribbean data (so that is one example of
> > data I have that are not released by NCDC),
Wattsupwithat reader stats. Now there’s a ‘Hockey Stick’ with real credibility.
Molon Labe (04:47:29) :
I agree, but for somewhat different reasons. First the files are somewhat organized, e.g. the documents directory is nowhere close to how the files would be organized on the host system. Also the mail files look to me as though they were extracted from a database and the extraneous mail header lines discarded. I’m not familiar with all the mail server stuff that’s out there, but I would never design one with a timestamp with a one second resolution or without full mail headers.
I’m also surprised that there’s so little personal Email, e.g., “Honey, please pick up a bottle of milk on your way home.” That’s a lot of mail to cull, and perhaps it was filtered by a program that did something like pass only Emails involving two of the AGW community. Hmm, it wouldn’t be difficult to do some processing on that and look for a such a list. Hmm, maybe tonight….
So, who ever did this spent a fair amount of time doing it, and I suspect he’s a current or past employee.
Jones asserts it was a cracker? His credibility right now isn’t very high….
I would also like to thank all involved (especially the heroic efforts of the moderators to keep up with posts yesterday).
Great news to wake up to yesterday. I spent most of the day just trying to catch up on the posts, as the news had broken long before I had the chance to check in and see it.
As mentioned above a lot of folks who do not cruise these select group of blogs, have no clue by and large that this is going on. Please everyone take advantage of your six degrees of connection to the wider world and put advisory notes regarding this issue out in other online media that would not normally get involved in climate. Also let them know that with a few exceptions the mainstream media is intentionally ignoring a huge scandal, and they need to go to alternate sources to find out in real time what is going on.
It is unacceptable that the major media outlets can black ball a topic and make it go away by ignoring it. Make sure the news leaks into other online outlets so a wider audience is aware of the recent events. All major scandals go through a period where they like a chain reaction grow relatively slowly then explode out of the tall grass into the major media.
Larry
OT but just posted this at Real Climate.
“I am a skeptic layman. I think the mistake AGW believers made was when then [they] let people like Al Gore proclaim that the debate is over. This begs the question “Why are we all still posting on blogs?” As Gavin well knows in science the debate is never over. I hope my post is accepted, if not then it will further demonstrate why skeptic blogs abound on the net.”
—
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
Einstein
May John Daly be looking down on all this and smile.I, for one am not so hopeless.
People are not as uninformed as one might think.Here in the USA our leap to give us the
American NHS may be stalling.Cap’n Tax is dead.Next year is an congressional election
year.I have done my best to spread the word about CRU.Even to my incense-burning
under -Al Gore’s picture- lefty Neighbor. He’s caught up in the CRU mess. and is not happy.I have E-mailed most of my office about this-the internet is the modern printing
press.The vanguard of the new information revolution I feel this is CRU information
is indeed “A shot heard ’round the world.”…
Now that is a hockey stick graph we can believe in!