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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Smokey (16:52:14):
Icarus,
Thank you for your citation, which is at odds with the NOAA graph I posted…
Not really, since it reported “ice mass-loss for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets”, not sea ice extent. Different things.
…[and since you were answering my global sea ice post we can just forget about your second link, which refers to glaciers].
Why should we forget about glaciers? They’re made of ice too, and they seem to be melting quite fast.
Your cite is also contradicted by this: click …
Again, you’re citing sea ice extent, not ice mass.
Should have been 1925 not 1825 in my 17.41 post
But here is some nowegian spaghetti. All data plotted with 17 year runing average
http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/9033/nordikallspaghetti.png
Icarus,
You have no reliable numbers on sea ice mass, and neither does anyone else including those in your cite [see a jones above]. So you can forget that mumbo jumbo. It’s simply another case of moving the goal posts after the first shot missed — the first misfire being the endless hand-waving about arctic ice, while ignoring the entire southern half of the planet.
You replied twice to my sea ice comments arguing about glaciers. Glaciers are an entirely different subject. But since glaciers are making you jump up and down, here are some facts:
Glaciers have been generally retreating since the LIA. Further, whether glaciers are advancing or retreating is a function of precipitation at higher altitudes, not CO2. Finally, if CO2 was causing glacier retreat, then all glaciers would be similarly retreating. They’re not.
Glaciers and tree rings are the easiest things in the world to cherry-pick. That’s why the alarmist crowd loves them so much. But glacier retreat is not the result of CO2, no matter how much you want to believe.
We constantly see pictures of a glacier moraine in scary articles preaching climate doom. But the planet doesn’t just have a few dozen glaciers in Switzerland. There are over 160,000 glaciers world wide. When you have a side by side comparison, get back to us. And don’t forget the Southern Hemisphere.
a jones (16:56:32) :
…if you believe that you can extract useful data from variations within the limit of experimental error of the Grace system pray go ahead. NASA likes to publicise this kind of thing but are careful to qualify it.
Presumably the author has some confidence in the results as she was involved in determining error estimates several years earlier –
“The GRACE satellite mission is mapping the Earth’s gravity field at monthly intervals. The solutions can be used to determine monthly changes in the distribution of water on land and in the ocean. Most GRACE studies to-date have focussed on producing maps of mass variability, with little discussion of the errors in those maps. Error estimates, though, are necessary if GRACE is to be used as a diagnostic tool for assessing and improving hydrology and ocean models. Furthermore, only with error estimates can it be decided whether some feature of the data is real, and how accurately that feature is determined by GRACE. Here, we describe a method of constructing error estimates for GRACE mass values. The errors depend on latitude and smoothing radius. Once the errors are adjusted for these factors, we find they are normally-distributed. This allows us to assign confidence levels to GRACE mass estimates. ”
Wahr, J., S. Swenson, and I. Velicogna (2006), Accuracy of GRACE mass estimates, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L06401, doi:10.1029/2005GL025305.
The results are also in broad agreement with studies from other researchers using different methods –
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Greenland/greenland.php
Ahhh yes, the ole “broad agreement” argument. Typically means the error bars are so large, you can make anything agree with it.
I am not sure what the point of arguing about sea ice/ land ice and glaciers are in the matter of AGW. As someone pointed out succinctly the Earth has warmed slightly. Glacier’s melting or retreating do not prove AGW. Ice Sheet gains or losses do not prove AGW.
Sceptics have not (at least not the ones I have spoken to) disagree that the Earth has warmed a bit in the last century. If the Earth warms there will be effects. To use effects of Earth Warming to justify the theory behind why you think the earth warmed is like trying to prove I shot my Neighbour simply because I have a gun in my house.
The theory is I shot him (AGW) the evidence so far is I own a gun, and my proximity, the result is the man dying. Police will not convict on this alone. They need evidence my gun was involved, that it may have been fired, that me personally had both the opportunity and motive to do so etc.
In this case we have the effects (Glaciers receding somehwat, temperatures in some places) We have the basic cause – being that the Earth has warmed (being the gun) the next step is to prove that AGW shot Global Warming – so to speak. In doing so, arguing “hes dead look you can see hes dead” ad nauseum proves nothing than he is dead – not that AGW shot him.
Now the evidence that AGW was responsibe, and carrying on this lovely exercise is cirumstantial. The Primary evidence (the most likely circumstantial evidence) that has been spouted by AGW proponants is that
a) In a Laboratory environment, extra CO2 causes a greenhouse effect; and
b) Temperature records over the past 30 years show “accelerated and/or unusual warming” that cannot be explained by natural variations.
In being perfectly honest, these really are the ontly two pieces of evidence relied upon for the connection between CO2 and Temperature increases of the Earth. Therefore if it can be shown that in a Real World situation, CO2 does not cause the warming expected as in Laboratory Conditions and/or that the warming of the last 30 odd years was accountable by natural causes or not unusual in climate terms, then what we are left with is “Climate Change”.
These documents and leakage from CRU show that the basis for evidence that shows that the recent warming is both unnatural in origin and unprecedented may not be accurate or indeed may be nullified. If this is the case, the result is that the theory of AGW loses (at the very least) on of its legs to stand on. Using the previous analogy, its a bit like having a witness come forward and declare they saw AGW at a local club chatting up a woman when Global Warming was shot. Is the witness reliable? we have to check that. If it turns out the witness is reliable – then at the very least, everyone, including MSM and Politicians have to face the fact that there is a good chance AGW was not to blame.
And to be clear, as I said previously – what these documents may refute is that AGW was the driver for the warming we have seen – not refuting that any warming has taken place. If you wish to argue the point that you believe that AGW was responsible in spite of the witness coming forward, by all means, but sidetracking into Glacial or Ice Retreats, local temperature highs and the like cannot be used as proof of AGW and by doing so create your own strawman to refute. (Ie Premise is AGW, Glacial Retreat shows warming occured therefore AGW is real?)
How disgusting. A peer within the scientific community asking questions and getting the run around, then finally told to read the IPCC report, which didn’t contain the data the professor wanted. While I’m sure this sort of thing occurs in science and other fields, it amazes me that, once uncovered, these people still arrogantly claim they have nothing to hide. Sack the lot of them they are wasting taxpayers money. Their repeated refusals to release their data sets makes them undeserving of the title scientist.
Michael R (19:12:57) : – I agree it is a pointless argument. Ice melts when its warm.
The real point is – was it as warm or warmer in the past? If it was then the ice melted then too. Climate changes. It has in the past without our help. We need to explain that first before jumping to the conclusion – we done it.
Every now and again some Greenie in New Zealand starts to shout how the melting of the glaciers is accelerating. Except, of course, some years they are growing. They come, they go. Mostly they are going, but then again not so long ago they reached the sea, and the bulk of their melting was long prior to CO₂.
The “melting glaciers” is a real hit with the public, who don’t think it through. Take ice out of the fridge and put it on the bench and it will melt. That doesn’t prove the room is warming.
It was worth reading twice.
So there is more than 1 Ian Plimer in the world.
Richard wrote:
“What we cannot be sure of now, anymore, is that current “global warming” is more than any period even in the last 100 years.”
Well, it’s nice to think so, but even if that’s the pattern (highest temperatures in the 30s) in Africa and Australia as well, it would be quite a leap from that to saying that the global temperatures also follow that pattern.
Then there’s the possibility that our guy in the fight may be wrong about the temperatures.
It would be wiser to wait until there’s more of a consensus here of WUWT among us climate contrarians that there has been no real rise above the 30s before arguing aggressively in favor of this claim.
And even if there is a consensus here, it would still be wise to hold our fire on this matter until the other side won’t be able to make a plausible case to the uncommitted that our extraordinary claim is just nuts. We want to keep the other side on the defensive and not give them a chance to counterpunch.
The key points to hammer on are that the CRUsaders have engineered the “consensus” by their meddling with journal politics, and that they have exhibited an unprofessional, biased, and discreditable tendency to shut out and evade evidence contrary to their conclusion—and therefore their judgment is untrustworthy. For instance, as Keith said a bit above, “How disgusting. A peer within the scientific community asking questions and getting the run around, then finally told to read the IPCC report, which didn’t contain the data the professor wanted.”
That is something the average man can understand, and it is something that would convince him that the whole matter needs to be examined and critiqued by disinterested panels of scientists. That’s the goal we should keep in mind–a do-over. There’s never going to be an outcome where our side wins with a knockdown blow on the technical merits of our case.
Instead, science and society are going to need a face-saving way of backing out of their entanglement with these clowns–which we can offer them by asking them to call for a second opinion. (Who could object?) We can best do that by convincing them that their trust has been abused by underhanded practices and deaf-to-reason fanaticism. This is what will stir the masses to anger, and to some extent annoy the fence-sitters in the media: being deceived by their supposed betters, who have acted in a high-handed fashion and haughtily abused the public’s trust.
We should avoid raising any side issue that the warmists can “make an issue of” and use to distract the public’s attention from those crucial weak points.
Hugh said, “Frankly this is scary. Are we living in a democracy, or is a group of about 2,000 people running our lives and feeding us information as it pleases?”
I’d say that Hugh has hit the nail on the head. I think we took our first wrong turn sometime in the 1960s, when public schools went to hell in a handbasket and the idea of teaching children to be “independent thinkers” became nothing more than a quaint, archaic notion. Have you visited a public school lately? How are those kids going to have the intellectual wherewithal how to challenge authority and question spoon-fed media pablum?
Too many people happily accept without question whatever they’re told.
Scary.
Rose Thornton
http://www.uglywomansguide.com
Mann and Company are claiming that the FOI requests were simply attempts to waste their very valuable time and so ignoring the requests was the proper thing to do in the wider interests they were working on.
That is nonsense. Surely a small team of good scientists could have been in the loop at all times, up to date with the serious , innovative, hard tasked and hard working principal scientists . They would have understood the ongoing science and would have been able to supply any requirements covered in an FOI request without disrupting the flow of the high level science.
I wonder why Mann and Jones told such a stupid lie.
Oops: I should have said “so the other side,” not “until the other side.”
“[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”
So then, from the above, it seems that it is the conservation of a resource . . . “fossil fuels” . . . that is the real goal.
Their answer is to convert to “renewable resources” which at present cost many times the cost of using fossil fuels; coal, natural gas, and petroleum . . . which from what I have been able to discern, we in the US, at least, have in great abundance . . . in the centuries of future use catagorie.
It would seem that these people who are willing to lie to cause the (needless) conservation of fossil fuels have a notion that technology will not increase in the next 300 or 400 years . . . so we must severely cut back on fossil fuel use now . . . at whatever cost to humanity now.
Clearly, from the above, the point is to claim (falsely) that Anthropogenic Global Warming is happening, and claim (falsely) that AGW is caused by increased carbon dioxide due to fossil fuel combustion, to force a severe reduction in the use of fossil fuels.
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Roger Knights (03:36:25) : – Yes I agree with you totally there. Very premature to say instrumental temperature records may have been manipulated to such an extent.
But the emails have revealed that the CRUsaders have meddled and manipulated journals, and they have shut out and evaded evidence contrary to their conclusion – and therefore their judgment is untrustworthy as you have pointed out.
The proxy records they rely on to claim the current warming period is unprecedented in the last 1,000 years lies in tatters and hanging by a thread, or on on a lonely tree in Siberia if you wish. And that is where their shameful evasions, manipulation, judgement and conclusions already stand exposed.
Icarus (15:31:37) :
So even NORDKLIM endorse the CRU data. Interesting.
I dont’ think referencing and endorsing are the same thing.
tom s (17:52:57) :
“As I’ve stated ever since I heard of the attempted measurement of a global mean temperature with instruments that only had a margin of error of +/- 0.2C. Are you kidding me? The margin of error is probably more like +/- 1.0C. I mean, c’mon…really. How did they come up with there .2C margin anyways? So many factors affect each individual sensor that the idea of ‘homogeneousness’ in the data set is perposterous on it’s face. This needs to be robustly challenged.”
the .2C estimate is for 1sd. It is documented in Folland et al 2001.
back in 2007 when we were first asking for the data and code I noted a tactic of the AGW crowd that I termed “running for the ice” It goes like this: if you question the land sea record the AGWers will RUN FOR THE ICE. They will start to point at ice loss data. basically they are trying to run away from the problems with the land sea data. The problem with this tactic is that it is a retreat from what should be the best evidence. If you want to retreat from the fight over the land sea data and head for the ice then I have these questions:
1. Can you please point me to the raw data and the processing algorithms for the ice data? ( I SAID RAW DATA)
2. How far back does the ice data go? 30 years or so. Can you say anything
about the ice loss being unprecedented in the past 1000 years?
3. Why does ice melt? what role does the wind have to play? what role do currents play? what role does temperature play? Opps. you can’t understand
ice melt without looking at a temperature record. But alas you’ve left the defense of that record and run for the ice.
Basically, the ice loss/gain data is SECONDARY support for AGW. It’s getting warmer ( the land and sea record say so), Therefore we expect to see ice loss. Now, if you abandon your primary evidence, the land sea record, and try to argue that it’s getting warmer because the ice is melting, then you have retreated to secondary evidence of warming and you’ve lost the ability to say important things.
But let’s stipulate that the ice is melting and its melting because its getting warmer. How much warmer? can you go from ice loss data to a trend in temperature? probably not. You see the main point of contention is NOT whether or not it is getting warmer. The question is HOW much warmer? For that question you need the land sea record. And so after a brief scuffle on the ice we return to the principle question in AGW: how much warmer? Show us the raw data and show us the processing algorithms. OR we reserve judgement on the question of how much warmer.
Climate scientists have been calculating the global temps since 1987. And whats their record of performance? They lost the raw data and they won’t release the code ( noaa and CRU) Now, you ask me why this debate last so long. Incompetence.
Steve M. (12:29:49) :
Don’t you know how things work in climate science? If you don’t endorse something, you don’t reference it.
In fact, you collude with your buddies to purposely ignore it.
This series of exchanges excites and informs me. I’s way over my head reading much of what you all present and yet I read real good. I can follow argumentation well and my eyes do not glaze over when the posting turns technical. I learned a ton of stuff and in my own little corner of the world. I can AND WILL carry a good summary and solid description of your comments to friends who won’t invest the time this thread has demanded. My small bit. Thank you for equipping me so well.
The wheels have surely come off the GW HoaxWagon but some voodoo inertia keeps it moving forward but I’m finally hopeful that truth-and our nurturing of it- determines our fate. Keep up the good work.
The symbol should be a hockey stick. Surely that symbol is easily recognizable and has been discredited.
My grandson has been required to sit through Mr Gore’s movie three times this school year. He has lost at least 12 class hours watching that propaganda and then being required to write affirming papers on the movie.
I’m not a scientist, but I can see this behavior in the scientific community is disgraceful. Worse yet are those that try to cover over their errors, as this journalist is attempting. To call this “a tempest in a tea cut” is equally disgraceful.
Thank God for the InterNet.
Roger Knights (03:36:25) :
Richard wrote:
Roger, you raise a vital point. All that I am showing above is that the issue is not clear cut, and that what is sold is not always what the data shows.
As to whether the earth is warming, I think it is, and overall the earth has been warming for three hundred years or so. See the work of Akasofu, for example.
There are two questions in all of this. 1. How good is the data? 2. How good is the analysis and the results? Anthony Watt’s surfacestations projects shows that the data isn’t all that good, but that’s all we have to work with.
The validity of the analysis is a separate question. I suspect that it is pretty good, but has a number of questionable “adjustments”. In addition, there are theoretical problems with gridded data that have received insufficient attention. Finally, McKitrick has shown that about half of the warming is attributable to economic development (more parking lots, houses, fewer trees, less wind, more houses heated, etc.)
So although the generally good agreement between satellite and ground records tells me that the ground records are close to getting it right, the long term trends are likely overestimated. And although there is generally good agreement between the three analyses (CRU, GISS, and NOAA), they differ between them in long term trends.
I have just started an investigation of using cluster analysis instead of gridding to determine temperature averages. I’ll likely post on it at some point. In the meantime, there’s a site that let’s you look at adjusted and unadjusted CRU data at AIS. I encourage people to take a look.
Thanks for a valid point, don’t overstate what I show. I only show what I show.
Willis Eschenbach (23:33:51) :
in my post bill (17:24:04) :
I gave many plots using the same (?) data that you used. None of which agreed with your plot.
Can you explain the difference please.