Guest post by Willis Eschenbach
One of the claims in this hacked CRU email saga goes something like “Well, the scientists acted like jerks, but that doesn’t affect the results, it’s still warming.”
I got intrigued by one of the hacked CRU emails, from the Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth to Professor Wibjorn Karlen. In it, Professor Karlen asked some very pointed questions about the CRU and IPCC results. He got incomplete, incorrect and very misleading answers. Here’s the story, complete with pictures. I have labeled the text to make it clear who is speaking, including my comments.
From Jones and Trenberth to Wibjorn Karlen, 17 Sep 2008 (email # 1221683947).
[Trenberth]Hi Wibjorn
It appears that your concern is mainly with the surface temperature record, and my co lead author in IPCC, Phil Jones, is best able to address those questions. However the IPCC only uses published data plus their extensions and in our Chapter the sources of the data are well documented, along with their characteristics. I offer a few more comments below (my comments are limited as I am on vacation and away from my office).
[Karlen to Trenberth]Uppsala 17 September 2008,
Dear Kevin,
In short, the problem is that I cannot find data supporting the temperature curves in IPCC and also published in e.g. Forster, P. et al. 2007: Assessing uncertainty in climate simulation. Nature 4: 63-64.
[My comments] Here is the figure from Nature, Assessing uncertainty in climate simulations, Piers Forster et al., Nature Reports Climate Change , 63 (2007) doi:10.1038/climate.2007.46a
Original Caption: Figure 1: Comparison of observed continental- and global-scale changes in surface temperature with results simulated by climate models using natural and anthropogenic forcings. Decadal averages of observations are shown for the period 1906 to 2005 (black line) plotted against the centre of the decade and relative to the corresponding average for 1901–1950. Lines are dashed where spatial coverage is less than 50%. Blue shaded bands show the 5–95% range for 19 simulations from five climate models using only the natural forcings due to solar activity and volcanoes. Red shaded bands show the 5–95% range for 58 simulations from 14 climate models using both natural and anthropogenic forcings. SOURCE: http://www.nature.com/climate/2007/0709/full/climate.2007.46a.html
Here is the IPCC figure he is referring to, Fig. 9.12, once again with the black lines showing the instrumentally measured temperatures:
Original Caption: Figure 9.12. Comparison of multi-model data set 20C3M model simulations containing all forcings (red shaded regions) and containing natural forcings only (blue shaded regions) with observed decadal mean temperature changes (°C) from 1906 to 2005 from the Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit gridded surface temperature data set (HadCRUT3; Brohan et al., 2006). The panel labelled GLO shows comparison for global mean; LAN, global land; and OCE, global ocean data. Remaining panels display results for 22 sub-continental scale regions (see the Supplementary Material, Appendix 9.C for a description of the regions).
Note that around the globe, temperatures are shown as rising from 1900 to about 1930, falling or staying level until the mid ’70s, and then rising sharply after that.
So these are the curves that Professor Karlen is attempting to reconstruct. Note that the IPCC chapter identifies these as “sub-continental regions” and shows separate data for ocean regions.
[Karlen] In attempts to reconstruct the temperature I find an increase from the early 1900s to ca 1935, a trend down until the mid 1970s and so another increase to about the same temperature level as in the late 1930s.
A distinct warming to a temperature about 0.5 deg C above the level 1940 is reported in the IPCC diagrams. I have been searching for this recent increase, which is very important for the discussion about a possible human influence on climate, but I have basically failed to find an increase above the late 1930s.
[Trenberth] This region, as I am sure you know, suffers from missing data and large gaps spatially. How one covered both can greatly influence the outcome.
In IPCC we produce an Arctic curve and describe its problems and character. In IPCC the result is very conservative owing to lack of inclusion of the Arctic where dramatic decreases in sea ice in recent years have taken place: 2005 was lowest at the time we did our assessment but 2007 is now the record closely followed by 2008.
Anomalies of over 5C are evident in some areas in SSTs but the SSTs are not established if there was ice there previously. These and other indicators show that there is no doubt about recent warming; see also chapter 4 of IPCC.
[My comment] As I will show below, everything he says about the ocean and the sea ice and the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) is meaningless. The IPCC figure is solely for the land.
[Karlen] In my letter to Klass V I included diagram showing the mean annual temperature of the Nordic countries (1890-ca 2001) presented on the net by the database NORDKLIM, a joint project between the meteorological institutes in the Nordic countries. Except for Denmark, the data sets show an increase after the 1970s to the same level as in the late 1930s or lower. None demonstrates the distinct increase IPCC indicates. The trends of these 6 areas are very similar except for a few interesting details.
[Trenberth] Results will also depend on the exact region.
[My comments] I cannot find the NORDKLIM graphic he refers to, so I have calculated it myself. I used the NORDKLIM dataset available at http://www.smhi.se/hfa_coord/nordklim/data/Nordklim_data_set_v1_0_2002.xls. I removed the one marine record from “Ship M”. To avoid infilling where there are missing records, I took the “first difference” of all of the available records for each year and averaged them. Then I used a running sum to calculate the average anomaly. I did not remove cities or adjust for the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Here is the result:
You can see that, as Professor Karlen said, this does not show what the “Northern Europe” part of the IPCC graph shows. It is exactly as Professor Karlen stated, in the NORDKLIM data it rises until 1930, there is a drop from 1930 to 1970, followed by an increase after the 1970s to a temperature slightly lower than the 1930s. (In fact, the rise from 1880 until 1930 dwarfs the recent rise since the 1970’s). Here, for comparison, is a blowup of the “Northern Europe” graph from Fig. 9.12 above:
This claims that there is a full degree temperature rise from 1970 to 2000, ending way warmer than the 1930s. You can see why Professor Karlen is wondering how the IPCC got such a different answer.
[Karlen] I have in my studies of temperatures also checked a number of areas using data from NASA. One, in my mind interesting study, includes all the 13 stations with long and decent continuously records north of 65 deg N.
The pattern is the same as for the Nordic countries. This diagram only shows 11-yr means of individual stations. A few stations such as Verhojans and Svalbard indicate a recent mean 11-year temperature increase up to 0.5 deg C above the late 1930s. Verhojansk, shows this increase but the temperature has after the peak temperature decreased with about 0.3 deg C during the last few years. The majority of the stations show that the recent temperatures are similar to the one in the late 1930s.
In preparation of some talks I have been invited to give, I have expanded the Nordic area both west and east. The area of similar change in climate is vast. Only a few stations near Bering Strait deviates (e.g. St Paul, Kodiak, Nome, located south of 65 deg. N).
My studies include Africa, a study which took me most of a summer because there are a large number of stations in the NASA records. I found 11 stations including data from 1898-1975 and 16 stations including 1950-2003.
The data sets could in a convincing way be spliced. However, I noticed that some persons were not familiar with ‘splicing’ technique so I have accepted to reduce the study to the 7 stations including data from the whole period between 1898-2003. The results are similar as to the spliced data set andalso, surprisingly similar to the variability of the Nordic data.
Regression indicates a minor (if any) decrease in temperature (I have used all stations independent of location, city location or not).
[Trenberth] Africa is notorious for missing and inaccurate data and needs careful assessment.
[Karlen] Another example is Australia. NASA only presents 3 stations covering the period 1897-1992. What kind of data is the IPCC Australia diagram based on?
If any trend it is a slight cooling. However, if a shorter period (1949-2005) is used, the temperature has increased substantially.
The Australians have many stations and have published more detailed maps of changes and trends. There are more examples, but I think this is much enough for my present point:
How has the laboratories feeding IPCC with temperature records selected stations?
[Trenberth] See our chapter and the appendices.
[My comment] I have looked at these. The source for Fig. 9.1.2 is given as “(HadCRUT3; Brohan et al., 2006)”. HadCRUT3 is produced jointly by CRU and the Hadley Centre.
[Karlen] I have noticed that major cities often demonstrate a major urban effect (Buenos Aires, Osaka, New York Central Park, etc). Have data from major cities been used by the laboratories sending data to IPCC? Lennart Bengtsson and other claims that the urban effect is accounted for but from what I read, it seems like the technique used has been a simplistic
[Trenberth] Major inner cities are excluded: their climate change is real but very local.
[My comment] It is true that the IPCC Chapter 3 FAQ says this:
Additional warming occurs in cities and urban areas (often referred to as the urban heat island effect), but is confined in spatial extent, and its effects are allowed for both by excluding as many of the affected sites as possible from the global temperature data and by increasing the error range (the blue band in the figure).
To check this claim, I took the list of temperature stations used by CRU (which I had to use an FOI to get), and checked them against the GISS list. The GISS list categorizes stations as “Urban” or “Rural”. It also uses satellite photos to categorize the amount of light that shows at night, with big cities being brightest. It puts them into three categories, A, B, and C. C is the brightest.
It turns out that there are over 500 cities in the CRU database that the GISS database categorizes as “Urban C”, the brightest of cities. These include, among many others:
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
BANGKOK METROPOLIS, THAILAND
BARCELONA, SPAIN
BEIJING, CHINA
BRASILIA, BRAZIL
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND
DHAKA, BANGLADESH
FLORENCE, ITALY
GLASGOW, UK
GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA
HANNOVER, GERMANY
INCHON, KOREA
KHARTOUM, SUDAN
KYOTO, JAPAN
LISBON, PORTUGAL
LUXOR, EGYPT
MARRAKECH, MOROCCO
MOMBASA, KENYA
MOSKVA, RUSSIAN FEDERA
MOSUL, IRAQ
NAGASAKI, JAPAN
NAGOYA, JAPAN
NICE, FRANCE
OSAKA, JAPAN
PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL
SEOUL, KOREA
SHANGHAI, CHINA
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS
TOKYO, JAPAN
VALENCIA, SPAIN
VOLGOGRAD, USSR
So the CRU is using Tokyo? Beijing? Seoul? Shanghai? Moscow? Their claim is entirely false. In other words, once again the good folk of the CRU are blowing smoke. I can understand why it took me a Freedom of Information request to get the station list.
[Karlen] Next step has been to compare my results with temperature records in the literature. One interesting figures is published by you in:
Trenberth, K., 2005: Uncertainty in Hurricanes and Global Warming. Science 308: 1753-1754.
As you obviously know, the recent increase in temperature above the 1940s is minor between 10 deg N and 20 deg N and only slightly larger above the temperature maximum in the early 1950s. Both the increases in temperature in the 1930s and in the 1980s to 1990s is of similar amplitude and similar steepness, if any difference possibly slightly less steep in the northern area than in the southern (the eddies slow down the warm water transport).
Your diagram describes a limited area of the North Atlantic because you are primarily interested in hurricanes. The complexity of sea surface temperature increases and decreases is seen in e.g. Cabanes, C, et al 2001 (Science 294: 840-842).
[Trenberth] As we discuss, there is a lot of natural variability in the North Atlantic but there is also a common component that relates to global changes. See my GRL article with Shea for more details. Trenberth, K. E., and D. J. Shea, 2006: Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L12704, doi:10.1029/2006GL026894.
[Karlen] One example of sea surface temperature is published by:
Goldenberg, S.B., Landsea, C.W., Mestas-Nuoez, A.M. and Gray, W.M., 2001: The recent increases in Atlantic hurricane activity: causes and implications. Science 293: 474-479.
Again, there is a marked increase in temperature in the 1930s and 1950s (about 1 deg C), a decrease to approximately the level in the 1910s and thereafter a new increase to a temperature slightly below the level in the1940s.
One example of published data not supporting a major temperature increase during recent time is: Polyakov, I.V., Bekryaev, R.V., Alekseev, G.H., Bhatt,U.S., Colony, R.L., Johnson, M.A., Maskshtas, A.P. and Walsh, D., 2003: Variability and Trends of Air Temperature and Pressure in the Maritime Arctic, 1875-2000. Journal of Climate: Vol. 16 (12): 2067ñ2077.
He included many more stations than I did in my calculation of temperatures N 65 N, but the result is similar. It is hard to find evidence of a drastic warming of the Arctic.
It is also difficult to find evidence of a drastic warming outside urban areas in a large part of the world outside Europe. However the increase in temperature in Central Europe may be because the whole area is urbanized (see e.g. Bidwell, T., 2004: Scotobiology – the biology of darkness. Global change News Letter No. 58 June, 2004).
So, I find it necessary to object to the talk about a scaring temperature increase because of increased human release of CO2. In fact, the warming seems to be limited to densely populated areas. The often mentioned correlation between temperature and CO2 is not convincing. If there is a factor explaining a major part of changes in the temperature, it is solar irradiation. There are numerous studies demonstrating this correlation but papers are not accepted by IPCC. Most likely, any reduction of CO2 release will have no effect whatsoever on the temperature (independent of how expensive).
[Trenberth] You can object all you like but you are not looking at the evidence and you need to have a basis, which you have not established. You seem to doubt that CO2 has increased and that it is a greenhouse gas and you are very wrong. But of course there is a lot of variability and looking at one spot narrowly is not the way to see the big picture.
[My comment] Professor Karlen was quite correct. The claims made by the CRU, and repeated in the IPCC document, were false. Karlen was looking at the evidence.
[Karlen] In my mind, we have to accept that it is great if we can reduce the release of CO2 because we are using up a resource the earth will be short of in the future, but we are in error if we claims a global warming caused by CO2.
[Trenberth] I disagree.
[My comment] No comment.
[Karlen] I also think we had to protest when erroneous data like the claim that winter temperature in Abisko increased by 5.5 deg C during the last 100 years. The real increase is 0.4 deg C. The 5.5 deg C figure has been repeated a number of times in TV-programs. This kind of exaggerations is not supporting attempts to save fossil fuel.
I have numerous diagrams illustrating the discussion above. I don’t include these in an e-mail because my computer can only handle a few at a time. If you would like to see some, I can send them by air mail.
I am often asked about why I don’t publish about my views. I have. Just one example of among 100 other I could select is: Karlen, W., 2001: Global temperature forces by solar irradiation and greenhouse gases? Ambio 30(6): 349-350.
Yours sincerely
Wibjorn,
[Trenberth] I trust that Phil Jones may also respond
From: P.Jones
To: trenbert
Subject: Re: Climate
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:39:07 +0100 (BST)
Cc: Wibjorn Karlen
[Jones to Professor Karlen, same email]Wibjorn,
I’m in Athens at the moment. Unless you’re referring specifically to the Arctic the temperature curves in IPCC Ch 3 all include the oceans.
[My comment] Absolutely not. The legend for Fig. 9.1.2 (see above) says “(see the Supplementary Material, Appendix 9.C for a description of the regions)” Appendix 9.C in turn describes the calculations:
6. Apply land/ocean mask on observations. Plots describing observed changes in land or ocean areas were based on observed data that was masked to retain land or ocean data only (necessary to remove islands and marine stations not existent in models). This masking was performed as in Step 3, using the land area fraction data from the CCSM3 model.
Note that the ocean is entirely masked out of the observations.
And the regions are described as:
Note 2: List of Regions
The regions are defined as the collection of rectangular boxes listed for each region. The domain of interest (land and ocean, land, or ocean) is also given.
REGION, DESIGNATOR, COVERAGE, DOMAIN
Global, GLO, 180W to 180E, 90S to 90N, land and ocean
Global Land, LAN, 180W to 180E, 90S to 90N, land
Global Ocean, OCE, 180W to 180E, 90S to 90N, ocean
North America, ALA, 170W to 103W, 60N to 72N, land
North America, CGI, 103W to 10W, 50N to 85N, land
North America, WNA, 130W to 103W, 30N to 60N, land
North America, CNA, 103W to 85W, 30N to 50N, land
North America, ENA, 85W to 50W, 25N to 50N, land
South America, CAM, 116W to 83W, 10N to 30N, land
South America, AMZ, 82W to 34W, 20S to 12N, land
South America, SSA, 76W to 40W, 56S to 20S, land
Europe, NEU, 10W to 40E, 48N to 75N, land
Europe, SEU, 10W to 40E, 30N to 48N, land
Africa, SAR, 20W to 65E, 18N to 30N, land
Africa, WAF, 20W to 22E, 12S to 18N, land
Africa, EAF, 22E to 52E, 12S to 18N, land
Africa, SAF, 10E to 52E, 35S to 12S, land
Asia, NAS, 40E to 180E, 50N to 70N, land
Asia, CAS, 40E to 75E, 30N to 50N, land
Asia, TIB, 75E to 100E, 30N to 50N, land
Asia, EAS, 100E to 145E, 20N to 50N, land
Asia, SAS, 65E to 100E, 5N to 30N, land
Asia, SEA, 95E to 155E, 11S to 20N, land
Australia, NAU, 110E to 155E, 30S to 11S, land
Australia, SAU, 110E to 155E, 45S to 30S, land
So no, that excuse won’t wash. Once again Professor Karlan is quite correct. The observations simply don’t match the CRU/IPCC claims. Phil Jones’ story about the regions including the ocean is false.
[Jones] Fennoscandia is just a small part of the NH. When I’m back next week, I’ll be able to calculate the boxes that encompass Fennoscandia, so you can compare with this region. As you’re aware Anders did lots of the update work in 2001-2002 and he included all the NORDKLIM data. I can send you a list of the Fennoscandian data if you want – either the sites used or their data as well.
I guess you’re attachments are in your direct email, which I come to later.
One final thing – we are getting SST data in from some of the new sea-ice free parts of the Arctic. We are not using these as we’ve yet to figure out how to as we don’t have normals for these ‘mostly covered by sea ice in the 1961-90’ areas.
Cheers
Phil
[My comments]Now, I have not taken a stand on whether the machinations of the CRU extended to actually altering the global temperature figures. It seems quite clear from Professor Karlen’s observations, however, that they have gotten it very wrong in at least the Fennoscandian region. Since this region has very good records and a lot of them, this does not bode well for the rest of the globe …
My best to everyone,
w.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Excellent work!!
But you have to stop doing this, my jaw can’t drop any lower… 😉
Ern Matthews (08:01:03) :
“We need a refutenik symbol to identify the resistance to the Copenhagen treaty. It must look cool and recognizable and can be reproduced quickly.”
How about that U-Turn (up-then-down arrow) symbol used at the head of the prior thread, the one titled “U-CRU”?
Joanna Lumley (07:02:01) :
“hang on – but the bandwidths in the nature paper account for decreases in the standard error but overall shows a warming trend – as does your graph. Despite the variation all the figures show an overall warming trend. Have I missed something here?”
I agree. We should not fall into the tempting trap of saying that ALL or MOST of the warming is an artifact. That’ll set us up to be knocked down by the AWGers citing abundant natural-proxy proof of increasing temperatures over the 20th century. The main importance of the thumb the Team has put on the scale is not how much it’s offset the readings, which is minor, but what it implies about their objectivity and trustworthiness, which is major, as indicated by the post below:
JohnWho (07:00:04) :
“I’m going to try to ask this question as politely as possible:
When peer reviewed by scientists who were not part of the “CRU peer review team”, has anything reported by the CRU been shown to be accurate or acceptable?
At this point, it would sure seem that all that came from the CRU peer review team is suspect, is it not?”
Jerry (09:28:21) :
Pretty close, but first we had the Coming Ice Age, starring a few AGW notables.
My, how the wind blows back & forth.
We now need Climate Data Reform and Recontruction of the the Rural Climate Network.
Jim Watson (08:15:43)
I don’t think your memory is playing tricks, I recall 15% as well. So I looked in the Crysphere archive and extracted this from http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/guide/Data/walsh.html
Expert User Guidance
………… Because most of the direct observations of sea ice (1870-1971 period) are from ships at sea, they are generally the most complete near the ice edge. The conditions north of the ice edge are often assumed to be 100% covered during this period. The satellite era has shown otherwise with concentrations between 70-90% frequently occurring well north of the ice edge in the post-1972 data. For this reason, we recommend using a measure of ice extent, when doing historical comparisons of hemispheric sea ice coverage for periods which include data prior to 1972. This is done by assuming that all grid points with ice concentrations greater than some threshold (15% is commonly used) is assumed completely covered by sea ice.
If they have now switch arbitrarily to 30% then the ice coverage will appear to have declined substantially, whereas in reality nothing has changed except the definition.
Yet another case of manipulating the perception of climate change!
Love the result graphs on the front page – see what lovely correlations are possible when you get to bend the model AND the data?
SO much easier than science isn’t it? You know: pesky reality showing that you’re wrong, competent peers to point out your theory’s shortcomings (delusions).
Nope, clearly these ‘scientists’ (I use the term loosely) show the future – Gaol/Jail and bankruptcy (moral and financial).
These clowns deserve to be the posterboys of corruption & incompetence for generatons to come.
TEMPERATURE ANOMALY GRAPH FOR ALL NORDIC COUNTRIES
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/wrgb3.jpg
is in a very good agreement with a Geomagnetic cumulative graph representing three critical areas that may affect flow of the Arctic Ocean currents, as shown here
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NA-temGMF.gif
and with its constituent components:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NA-GMF.gif
Observe the CRU’s application of the Finagle Variable Constant to Climatology:
Finagle’s Constant:
Change the universe to fit the equation.
Finagle’s constant is used as a multiplier of the zero order term.
The Bougerre Factor:
Change the equation to fit the universe.
The Diddle Coefficient:
Change things so that the equation and the universe appear to fit without requiring any change in either.
We are assured that the CRU homogenized data comports with the “corrected” data from NOAA/NASA(GISS).
It is obvious that “raw” data requires “cooking” before public consumption.
This post on Climate Progress struck a little close to “home”:
“sod says:
November 29, 2009 at 7:28 am
oh and Judith, i have a couple of questions.
have you taken a look at the flood of posts and completely insane responses on WUWT?
haven t you seen enough of this tobacco lobby tactics, of sowing baseless doubts?
have you wondered, how many cutting edge PhD thesis will not be discussed in and surrounding Copenhagen because people are distracted by stolen e-mails, taken out of context?
isn t it time to take a strong stance against this abuse, by people with clearly false opinions?
ps: could you explain to anthony watts (and us, btw) what the meaning of “error>5°C” is? (it is the basis of the surface stations project, and not one person understands its meaning)”
I would have suggested to sod that he actually POST A QUESTION here instead of asking someone else to do this for him…but my posts are not allowed there anymore 🙂
JimB
p.s. Anthony…I had no idea you didn’t understand what the actual basis of the surface stations project was.
Can’t make it up.
JimB
Willis,
I have some comments on the the global temperature record at http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=308#comments
Summary:
1. Mitchell’s 1970 temperature reconstruction is inconsistent with CRU and GISS.
2. Spirina’s independent 1971 temperature reconstruction is inconsistent with CRU and GISS.
3. Both reconstructions look a lot like Briffa;s censored MXD time series.
Greenland is worse. Even Gisstemp shows a cooling there:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2009&month_last=10&sat=4&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=1937&year2=2000&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
Very fine work, Willis. Even if CRU won’t (can’t?) cough up its data, it may well die the death of a thousand cuts.
Well, you’re wrong.
Paul Krugman, economist, columnist and author, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and op-ed columnist for The New York Times, 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize winner in Economics for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography says you are all wrong about the e-mails AND the science.
He explained it all this morning on ABC’s Step-on-all-of-us’ show.
/sarc
.
.
The following comment about real costs to society, is pertinent across all of the topics discussed in these numerous threads.
An economist (?) called Keeney, suggested that when society spends about $3 million of its wealth in a wasteful manner (needless regulation, stupidity, graft, corruption, earmarks, science fraud, etc), rather than where it will do society some true benefit – usually preventive medicine and even education – then premature loss of one life will be the cost to our advanced society. It’s a zero sum game. Today, that figure is probably closer to $5 million or more.
If all of this financial waste, following the Climate alarming follies, amounts to about $2 trillion, then it suggests that about 400,000 premature and needless deaths in our society will be the real cost. And what is the benefit to society of this climate alarmism? …Not only zero benefit at best, but undoubtedly even negative benefit, i.e. even more cost. Benefit to the environment, is also close to zero! We can’t afford it!
It is all cost, without any gain whatsoever. And the true cost of such alarmism to society is said to be much, much higher than just $2 trillion.
For some perspective; U.S. regulatory costs in 2005 were approximately $1.13 trillion, equal to almost half of all of the government’s discretionary, entitlement and interest spending ($2.47 trillion), and much larger than the sum of all corporate pre-tax profits — $874 billion. Much of the expenditure on regulation in the US, is ill-spent on the most expensive cures that do the least good, as Tengs et al. showed in their accessible papers.
One commenter noted that to save the most lives at least cost, one just needed to abolish the EPA. I suggest we get rid of CRU, as well as GISS, at least in their present forms, for the same reason.
Ern Matthews (08:01:03) :
“We need a refutenik symbol to identify the resistance to the Copenhagen treaty. It must look cool and recognizable and can be reproduced quickly.”
I got it! An image of Copenhagen’s mermaid looking disgustedly at the warmists’ convention in the city (indicated by a building topped with wavy lines (a warming convention in cartoons) with a clothespin on her nose and (optional) making a thumbs-down gesture.
Fennoscandia? The discussion consists of:
Okay, Firefox can’t find any other references on this page. Willis generated a graph of all Nordic countries, and there’s one from the IPCC for Northern Europe.
Wikipedia says:
So I’m not sure what region Willis has plotted (I’ll assume he left out Greenland and Iceland). I haven’t drawn the bounding box of “Europe, NEU, 10W to 40E, 48N to 75N, land” Is that another definition of Fennoscandia?
Willis Eschenbach
Well done Sir.
Who needs a Kindle!
“D.King (10:08:30) :
…
Who needs a Kindle!”
I DO!…I use mine to read this site when I’m away from the home office 🙂
JimB
So in raw dataset after raw dataset we see current temperature about the same or less than earlier this century. Without the “homogenization” adjustments the data matches Solanki’s solar correlation very well and AGW could not then be discerned in the data which, if honestly reported, would mean the end of the grant money. Means, motive and opportunity as they say.
Taking this out of my memory but as far I remember the highest recorded temperature in Sweden, one of the nordic countries, is 38C and was set in Målilla.
What year you ask? 1938.
Still not beaten.
Additional info is that Sweden is probably one of the most climate alarmistic countries in the world.
Very little that is not pro AGW is written in newspapers in Sweden even if it does happen. For example Tiger woods family problems and car crash has got many times more news coverage than climategate has.
Go figure why ppl belive in AGW, it’s all they hear.
I am informing ppl at my work about climategate and many can’t belive it is true. So you probably have got a bunch of new readers who are checking out what is really happening.
Here is something very disturbing and will require an urgent and open parliamentary commission of investigation in the United Kingdom.
It seems that the official information being disbursed to the government departments and subjects of Her Majesty regarding the projections for climate change and adaptation requirements is corrupted by association with the apparent fraud committed by the CRU. This resource needs to be taken offline immediately until the legal status of CRU and Phil Jones in particular becomes clearer.
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/868/9/
The output from this resource is intended to guide UK energy and government policy in its response and adaptation to AGW, with cost projections in the hundreds of billions of pounds in taxation and expenditure.
UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) is an UK Met Office resource (funded by the UK government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) providing “climate information …… using probabilistic projections of climate change based on quantification of the known sources of uncertainty.”
The following link identifies Phil Jones at CRU as the lead author of the “Projections of future daily climate for the UK from the Weather Generator”
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/941/522/
The following link identifies Phil Jones at CRU in a peer review capacity:
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/946/670/
Trends Report Reviewers
Prof Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Briefing Report Contributors
Prof Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Briefing Report Reviewers
Prof Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Climate Change Projections Report Reviewers
Prof Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Weather Generator Contributors
Prof Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
Weather forecasting and climate ‘science’ has gone to the dogs in the UK. The Met Office predicts in its seasonal forecast a 50% chance of a milder than average winter in the UK
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/2009/winter/
It’s OK to laugh here… they can’t even forecast next weeks weather.
However, Phil Jones’ UKCP09 weather generator can tell me that in the year 2080 under a low emmissions scenario, there is a 90 percent probability that the change in mean winter temperature will be plus 3.9 centigrade in Yorkshire & Humber
http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/513/527/
This isn’t bad science, this is BS and fraud and needs to be closed down immediately.
RIch, JimB rich (on so many levels!)
Considering this come from ‘sod’ which at one time stood for ‘Seed of Doubt – Iraq’ * (the last I checked he had ceased operations on his little blog page and it since has disappeared from Google listing).
* Response by Anthony to sod in this post on 4-30-2009 about his blog.
.
.
REPLY: yeah “sod” is a troll, substance-less. He can’t even admit to his own failures at blogging, so his mission now is to sow “seeds of doubt”. – A
Well this is my effort to attack the scam – email to my MP;
Remember that you should ONLY address your MP.
Your signature should include your name AND address
Your MP has to acknowledge (& deal with) written communications – they have as yet no requirement to answer fax or emails – so if they ignore the email – go back to the 20th century & hope the Post Office is not on strike ! – You could also go to a ‘surgery’ or the local party offices…
The only other approach is to address the Speaker – with a complaint that your MP does not respond (so first email & write then the Speaker) – but for watt its worth – here is my attempt…
AGW : Cru : pause for thought
…
From:
…
View
To:
I trust that you have heard about the release of emails and documents from the University of East Anglia ; Climatic Research Unit
Since the emails have not been claimed to be false; I would like to know from the relevant government departments answers to the following points.
Some emails are quite specific in what appears to be instructions/requests and admission as to the intent to delete information requested under an FOIA request gor information. Since CRU is publicly funded; it is probable that all materials stored on their computers and with in the university’s IT system would be covered by the laws governing such requests. Will the relevant authorities be investigating these emails in light of this apparent blatant and cynical attempt to circumvent the law ?
The scientific method demands that all data and calculations; methods and all information relevant to any theory be made publicly and freely available so that others may see how the results of a theory have been arrived at. Since some of the emails specifically appear to evade this basic requirement should not all work that has emanated from the CRU be considered NOT to be scientific in nature; and there fore require urgent review by an independent and balanced body of multi disciplined scientists who would have the job of reviewing all the CRU’s work to see if the conclusions that were reached have any grounding in proper scientific debate ?
In view of the content of some of the emails appearing to be attempts to prevent the publication of views contrary to those held by the CRU; is this not proof that the science on AGW is NOT settled; nor can it possibly be agreed by consensus. To maintain there is consensus and broad agreement whilst actively attempting to silence those who disagree is obviously a dis-honest position; if there were consensus and/or the science was settle just who (and why) were they trying to silence, the very fact that they conspired to silence the opposition destroys the credibility of CRU.
I look forward to receiving both your reply and the replies from the ministries concerned.
Finally; since some of the emails appear to show that bids for academic grants were deliberately and wilfully mis-represented; can we expected a statement and action regarding the de-frauding of the public purse by these actions ? At the very least I would have expected the police to have seized CRU’s IT infrastructure in an effort to ensure that no further evidence is destroyed.
<>
Claiming Central Government will do it anyway is not a reason : it is a coward’s way out
Not everything digital is better
Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behaviour. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behaviour. – Dee Hock
Foreign Aid – Taxes paid by poor people in rich countries for the use of rich people in poor countries.
Fred from Canuckistan . . . (08:32:41) :
“With all that smoke & mirrors I am surprised the CRU Team didn’t rediscover N Rays.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/global_warming_fraud_and_the_f.html ”
American Thinker article says “You don’t fabricate data (as one CRU scientist did while compiling weather-station data. Running into problems, he states, “I can make it up. So I did.” He adds an evil smiley face. This e-mail has gone under radar up until now. It can be found in the comments on James Delingpole’s blog.).” and links to http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017451/climategate-how-the-msm-reported-the-greatest-scandal-in-modern-science/ where if one searches on “make it up” one finds a comment which says one of the emails or files says “Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING – so the correlations aren’t so hot! Yet
the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is
supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ’supposed’, I can make it up. So I have .” and is followed by an evil smiley.
But, I can’t find any such comment when i search here http://www.eastangliaemails.com/
help?
I bet “deconstructionists” aren’t applauding this deconstruction.
I’ve tried to post a question twice now here. It’s not even showing up as awating moderation. Did comments close? Have I done something to disallow commenting?