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.
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In France, Courtillot had to redo the work from raw stations in Europe because Jones refused for 4 years to communicate the raw data CRU used…
And he showed a completely different picture than IPCC…
A little bit of good news re influencing the Conservative Party supporter base in the UK.
Over here – one of the most widely read and most influential blogs is run by a publisher/media pundit Iain Dale [he’s also trying to run for office].
He gets about 25k hits a day and as you’d expect, most of these are politically very savvy/media peeps.
He’s just reposted today’s Times article on Climategate. And signed it off with “No Thanks”
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/11/trust-us-say-climate-change-scientists.html
JackStraw, you have hit the nail on the head. A person really doesn’t need to know anything about science to see where the money and power are flowing. It is all well and good to discuss how science should be done, as that is an important topic by itself, but the bottom line here is politics, money, and power. That is what is pushing against Climategate becoming anything significant.
If you corner a bear, you better hope you have something other than a pocket knife with you. Truth, justice, and the American way (which I hope doesn’t offend our dear friends in Canada and elsewhere) is not going to be enough in this fight. We need big guns, in the shape of politicians and influential people, to back us up. However, there is nothing in Climategate for those people. They have more to gain from global dominance than from siding with anyone else. What are the chances of a global popular uprising against the current status quo? About as much chance as going against a bear with a pocket knife.
Is this not proof that global warming is Mann made.
Jim,
I got quite a chuckle out of “tobacco-lobby tactics”.
I had no idea he’d already been here…thanks for refreshing my memory 🙂
It appears that he’s found a home, as he posts on that particular blog frequently.
JimB
Kirls (10:46:29) :
It’s a code comment – try HARRY READ ME – think it’s in there.
this is breathtaking.
many sceptics accepted some temperature rise since the 30s due to ‘coming out of the little ice age’, land use changes, solar activity, and a small contribution by greenhouse gases.
it was considered that increases were overstated due to urbanisation, poor siting of stations and incorrect data adjustments. however, nobody really thought that there was no increase at all.
My comment likely will not enhance the discussion here, but where else to post?
I’ve been reading the posts and comments on realclimate.org and comparing them to the articles and comments posted here.
The argument at RC.org seems to be, whatever one may think of our data and methods, substantial evidence gathered and published by third parties exists and confirms our conclusions.
Cf. here, where the argument seems to be, most published papers are the fruit of a poisoned tree of data handles at some point the CRU crew or their cronies, and therefore are not trustworthy. Ergo, AGW is unfounded.
Fair assessment?
So whither from here?
Reconstruct actual raw data from the existing stations and do the math and plotting anew?
How can we non-scientists have faith in the new data/information?
How can global warming be discerned from so few data sources?
What of visual clues about warming, e.g., retreating glaciers and earlier springs?
It is all very confusing. It is no wonder no MSM have truly taken on the story — it is not reducible to single-serving stories.
Excellent post, Willis! I’m e-mailing this to a friend who still cannot be convinced that CAGW is a scam. People just don’t understand how information can be controlled, and are suspicious of conspiracy claims, envisioning a huge community of scientists independently beavering away and confirming the IPCC’s “science”.
I’ve been giving some thought to the “leaked” e-mails. The person involved was obviously a Brit.: why else would the BBC be selected as the first recipient? I also think it was an inside job as the person involved was probably a minor player in the team .. perhaps the frustrated programmer himself? … who had no understanding of the biases of the BBC before seeing how the events unfolded, and had to educate himself as to where to find the best places for this to get out, thus finally settling on Jeff Id and others. The timing is actually unfortunate: had the BBC acted as this person presumably supposed it would, the scientific community would have had more time leading up to Copenhagen to analyze and internalize the extent of the scam. As it is the experts here at WUWT (of which I am not one) are scrambling to get to grips with the enormity of the deception, and to get the MSM to pay attention. It’s probably too late to have the impact it should before Copenhagen. A shame! And to agree with others here – it’s worse than we thought!
off topic, yahoo is reporting that the developing nations are starting to make monetary demands over Copenhagen: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091129/ap_on_bi_ge/climate_follow_the_money
Have gained a very diverse andhuge amount of information from your site.
Not sure how to forward a link, but I think your audience will enjoy this!
Dane Skold,
The key thing that the dendroclimatology has done is: Eliminate the Medieval Warm Period.
If you think about it, that single thing influences the answers to your other questions.
1) Iff (meaning: if and only if) there was a strong medieval warm period, then our current models are inadequate. (They don’t allow such a strong warming without a concurrent increase in carbon dioxide.) The best computer models still have issues with the warming of the 1940’s.
2) Iff there was a strong MWP, then the current glacial retreats are historically uninteresting. We know there were fields of grain planted under what is now permanent ice in Greenland – weather happens.
“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”.
It must be noted that the Svalbard airport station data have been homogenised. Recoring began in 1975, and for earlier years (back to 1911) most data have been taken from a station about 4 km away, but in pretty different topology, and from another station 10’s of km away. For several years data only from stations even further away have been used, and even from Greenland. Some years lack data altogether and have been reconstructed by interpolations. Even though Svalbard airport acts as a reference climate station and is interesting for climate studies, one should have the hidden uncertainties in mind. So we can only say that some years in the 30’s were about as warm as recent years, but it’s hard to tell for sure which year, recent or in the 30’s, was the warmest, even though the Svalbard homogenised series will indicate the year with a 0.1 degree resolution.
Still Warming Eh ? ?
And Winston looked at the sheet handed him:
“Adjustments prior to 1972 shall be -0.2 degrees and after 1998 shall be +0.3 degrees.”
Winston wondered at the adjustment to the data. At this point, no one even knows if the data, prior to his adjustments, was raw data or already adjusted one or more times previously.
It didn’t matter. All Winston was sure of is that one of the lead climatologists needed more slope to match his computer model outputs. He punched out the new Fortran cards and then dropped the old cards into the Memory Hole where they were burned.
“There!” Winston exclaimed to himself. “Now the temperature data record is correct again; all is double-plus good.”
Richard M (08:03:17) :
Great work, Willis. Claims that this is not intentional have just been made moot. You’ve shown clearly that the culprits were shown real data that did not match their claims. Rather than looking for scientific reasons why this might be the case, they lied and went on their merry way.
Dittos, Willis. What you have done – displaying or describing what actually occurs or has occurred – should be something that the elite Climate Scientists necessarily do in order to be Scientists. But they don’t.
[You have also provided some more “context” for Dr. Curry. Since she is Chair, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Ga. Tech, I have no idea why she wouldn’t have already had enough of her own “context” – including checking some of the basic data such as Professor Karlen did – in order to make a more definitive call as to the lack of credibility of Climate Science, but I’m still giving her a pass and a little more time to finally say or do something to try to bring the Scientific Method back into Climate Science.]
“[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.”
I think that this is the key line in all of this.
Here is what I hear [Trenberth] saying:
I say that CO2 is increasing.
I say that if CO2 increases, then temperature increases.
Therefore, the temperatures increased. Case closed.
Here is what I hear [Karlen] saying:
I have all of the data for the particular area that we are discussing and I have looked and looked at the data and I can’t find the increase. I’m just telling you what the data says.
All this is dodo.
Look, CRU & GISS and the cabal of AGW ‘scientists’ attacked the truth from 2 sides at once.
1. Adjust the raw global temperature readings to increase the rate of late 20th Century warming.
2. Minimize the natural variability of climate attributable to solar by fabricating the handle of the ‘Hockey Stick’ curve (and later similar curves).
From there, all error is magnified.
Amazing!
I just wrote this letter to Bishop Hill:
Your Ecclesiastical Eminence, in these times of strife a great evil, stealthily perpetuated on the masses, and long suspected by a growing band of sceptics, has finally been revealed.
In the days of the reformation, the ruling classes sought to hide the message of benevolence by banning the Word to all but the ruling priestly classes and spread lies and claims of infallibility by rendering their interpretation of the message, hidden to all but a select few.
The spread of communication and openness were ultimately victorious but only after great strife, as the vested powers fought to retain their priviledges by clamping down on freedom, glossing over the revelations and attempting to perpetuate their lies.
Today also we are faced with this momentous battle against a terrible untruth which harms many for the benefit of a few.
Your Eminence, the media all but blanks out the lies revealed in the email messages and the interpretation of them is left to the very persons who stand exposed to deceit. The scientific journals and associations of science have been infiltrated and corrupted and are now controlled by this evil cabal.
The battle is thus left to the lowly citizens of the blogosphere, who with their spades and their pitchforks must storm the impregnable fortress of the Bastille.
I appeal to you that you, as in the past, use your gifts of lucidness and clarity to expose their lies for all to see, even those who are confused by the language of the deceivers.
There are media blackouts, complete silence by large sections of the press, even Google is censoring their search engine and Wikipedia gives the Realclimate version of “hiding the decline” and has locked further editing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
They do say “This page is currently protected from editing until disputes have been resolved.
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So I ask you to do a piece on “hiding the decline”. This has confused many in the sceptic camp, who view this as the deceivers hiding a decline in present temperatures instead of showing an actual rise.
This misinterpretation is being used by the deceivers to cover up their actual deceit.
As I understand it “hiding the decline” refers to hiding an inconvenient decline of temperatures when using proxy tree data to “reconstruct” temperatures of the past 1,000 years. This reconstruction shows the temperatures declining in the past 50 odd years instead of increasing as in the instrumental records. Rather than throw out the whole reconstruction as dubious, the deceivers graft on the past 50 years from the instrumental records onto the reconstruction, something that they know is bad science and something that they expressly said they had never done.
So “hiding the decline” actually refers to a methodology whereby they use a spurious reconstruction to “get rid of” or hide the Medieval Warm Period, which inconveniently shows global warming, as of today, occurring quite naturally.
Also most importantly, contrary to the claim in RealClimate that “trick” and “hiding the decline” was merely a “poor choice of words” and the hiding was done “in plain sight”, actually heinous deceit and concealment was indulged in.
Please use your powers and the cohorts of your parish to storm the Bastille of the Wikipedia “Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident”
Sincerely – Richard
Now it appears that “hiding the decline” may have even more sinister connotations.
Excellent work by Willis Eschenbach! I’ve forwarded this to colleagues to show them how it is possible that an entire scientific community could have been duped or silenced. Still having to battle their skepticism about the whole thing.
In today’s Toronto Sun, despite Lorrie Goldstein’s long-term skepticism and his excellent account of Climategate, there is a “news” article the essence of which is that Climategate is being exposed as a conspiracy by global warmists. But since global conspiracies of a scale that would be involved for the entire scientific community to be complicit cannot possibly exist, then Climategate is actually just a few unsavoury e-mails amongst a group of friends. Definitely the spin doctors are in high gear.
Lots of work ahead of us, and thanks to Willis Eschenbach and others for working in the trenches on this.
To me this dialog is an excellent example of the small AGW cabal trying to get other scientists signed on to their agenda. Most of these have not done the kind of work that Karlen has, so the arm waving, and the “look at HadCrut” tends to work with them. But when they run into a truely informed scientist, it no dice. Nevertheless, this explains a lot about all of the so called scientists that have signed on to AGW. They simply don’t know, and they have taken the word of people like Trenberth, Jones, Mann, Schmidt, Briffa, etc. But when these swayed people are then asked their opinion, it sounds like most scientists are on board. Then, when people are told of all the scientists who agree with AGW, they assume that it actually means something.
@ur momisugly Kirls Thank you for posting the link direct to the paper
@ur momisugly John Silver,the link you provide to the Stockholm also has petition on the site which seems to have numerous scientists and engineers supporting the petition.
In my earlier post regarding Manley’s CET and the current Hadcrut temperature I should have made clear that Manley’s paper has in addition to the graphs the temperature data to 1659 to 1973. I believe it was the mid 90’s when Professor Jones got involved with the CET
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
On the above link there is a statement saying based on Parker et al. I can’t locate the graph prepared in this paper?
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/ukweather/
This is a link to an article by Professor Jones there is still something strange about the graphs but look what happens when they use a temperature anomaly graph? See first link.
Mr Moderator
I hope I am not flogging a dead horse here, but I am intuitively convinced there is sufficient data which could be used to show manipulation and at least the data is available in the Manley paper?
I could post this at Climate Audit but I know that Mr McIntyre dislikes people constantly delegating to him.
Sorry for the rambling post?
Some people may think I am pointing to a conspiracy:-)
Apparently, Climategate has reduced the AGW crowd’s argument to this…
In other words… It has had no effect… 😉
I feel such an idiot Mr Eschenbach has already dealt with CET in “007
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/004482.html
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh
Larry Geiger (11:32:49) :
Here is what I hear [Trenberth] saying:
I say that CO2 is increasing.
I say that if CO2 increases, then temperature increases.
Therefore, the temperatures increased. Case closed.
Exactly – as far as I can tell that’s about the full extent of the AGW “science”, simply a mantra which they only repeat over and over again in their “studies”.
Add to that, “and we’re all gonna die, so we better become enslaved or commit suicide first”, and there you have it, the whole bleeping AGW enterprise.
Larry:
“Here is what I hear [Trenberth] saying:
I say that CO2 is increasing.
I say that if CO2 increases, then temperature increases.
Therefore, the temperatures increased. Case closed.”
Yes, this one surprised me also. It equates to the most childish and naive arguments that you get from uninformed AGW bloggers on the net. Trenberth accuses Karlen of disputing that CO2 is rising. Karlen does nothing of the sort. And he accuses Karlen of disbelieving that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Again, Karlen does nothing of the sort. Karlen is simply saying that the data doesn’t show the warming. Trenberth is unable to show him that it does, other than with the classis appeal to authority. But Karlen is an authority himself, so Trenberth strikes out. Basically, Trenberth is resorting to a personal attack in the hope of intimidating Karlen to his point of view. I saw Trenberth try to do the same thing to Roy Spencer in a congressional hearing. And he tried to convince the congress that “it’s worse than we though”, based only on a couple of years of Arctic melt. He ignored Antarctic ice expansion; he ignored the flat temperature trend; he ignored the flat ocean temperature trend, and he ignored the fact that sea level rise has started to flatten. And he didn’t mention that most of the Arctic change had to do with winds and currents. It’s hard to tell who is fighting for Baghdad Bob’s job the hardest, Trenberth, Jones, or Mann.