Quite a bit different from their November 24th statement, which you can read here. For those that still think Climategate has no significant impact on climate science, this revelation tells another story.
Met Office to re-examine 160 years of climate data
The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.
The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.
The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.
The Met Office works closely with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), which is being investigated after e-mails written by its director, Phil Jones, appeared to show an attempt to manipulate temperature data and block alternative scientific views.
The Met Office’s published data showing a warming trend draws heavily on CRU analysis. CRU supplied all the land temperature data to the Met Office, which added this to its own analysis of sea temperature data.
Since the stolen e-mails were published, the chief executive of the Met Office has written to national meteorological offices in 188 countries asking their permission to release the raw data that they collected from their weather stations.
The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.
The development will add to fears that influential sceptics in other countries, including the US and Australia, are using the controversy to put pressure on leaders to resist making ambitious deals for cutting CO2.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change admitted yesterday that it needed to consider the full implications of the e-mails and whether they cast doubt on any of the evidence for man-made global warming.
========
“influential sceptics in other countries” I wonder who that could be?
I applaud the open process though.
So…The MET has the original data – right? HUMMMMM…me thinks I smell a rotten fish….
Mike
How could our governments make any policy on climate alarmism when so much has been revealed. Copenhagen seems like a waste of time. And how will we know that the new data will be both authentic and unadjusted. I would have thought a panel of experts from BOTH sides of the debate overseeing the task would help restore credibility and authenticity to the data – as a suggestion Steve Mc and Anthony Watts
I believe the whole thing needs to be done over again, by a completely different group of people. And all of the data, methods, and programs have to be public, for anyone to examine and verify, just like an open source project.
“The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.”
E.M. Smith could probably toss in a few helpful pointers ;o)
Hey, I’m willing to do my part. If NOAA can come up with the jpegs of the original forms, I’ll be happy to sift through my own area.
Some parts of the US go all the way back to the Dalton and beyond.
With the Sun acting up the way it is, it’s better to know all there is to know than to sit idly by while getting run over.
REPLY: you can look at the B91 forms in PDF form from the observer here:
http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html
Choose California then Weaverville RS – Anthony
How do they know that they analysis will take three years? Why not two? Why not four?
Frankly, these guys are so vested in AGW ($$$) that we still have every reason to doubt the sincerity of this “do-over.” If they are starting the “do-over” with preconceived notions about CO2 and what they think the temperatures should look like, what’s the point?
This thing reeks of white-wash.
twawki (20:02:09) :
Copenhagen needs a SnowCheck, I mean a raincheck.
Yeah, I agree. What is the point in painting the town red when the bottle is empty?
Stay home, Obama, you got enough places to go, people to see and things to do as it is.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out its (drumroll) Worse Than We Thought.
So does this mean back to square one for the whole of climate science? And will that translate into, back to the drawing board as to what to do about the climate change? Does that not mean putting on hold any policies based on the previous, now found to be faulty data. What step of reason have I missed? If I have missed none, then why are our politicians proceeding as if? Finally, will we sit back and let them proceed?
“The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.” You’d think the government would be happy to be relieved of the huge expense of having to combat ‘global warming.’ Or were they just planning to take the money and make soothing noises.
This work should be overseen by a board comprised of a variety of climate scientists with a range of opinion from ardent Alarmist to questioning skeptic. Only then can we trust that the results are as valid as they can be. As part of this exercise, a ‘red’ view as well as a ‘blue’ view should be presented to represent the range of intepretation as to what temperatures have actually done over the last 150 years. They should make Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts chairman!
I completely agree with the comments by James Hastings-Trew. CRU is the last institution that should be entrusted to perform a “do-over.” Surrender hen-house keys to fox. Repeat scandal.
James dead is on the money about open source.
This newspaper writer needs to take Science101 before writing on the topic. Science can’t state anything with absolute certainty, ever. The re-re-re-re-re analysis of this data will just raise our certainty from 99.0% to 99.05%.
Canada’s Globe&Mail is now giving a more balanced though still biased report. It takes awhile before they shift from stolen e-mails to possibly leaked. mhttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/breach-in-global-warming-bunker-shakes-foundations-of-climate-science/article1389842/
I guess nobody is buying that the NOAA has CRU’s raw data as CRU claimed to go to the NOAA and that none of their raw data was destroyed. I’m not really sure what to make of this as it sounds like Met has preconceived notions, but they also say it will take them three years to examine things. It could go either way. Perhaps the one pushing this just wants to make it look like they have preconceived notions in order to get the analysis through or this could be an attempt to sweep things under the rug. Time will tell…maybe the Met doesn’t care and so will use this to put themselves in a good position with whatever way the wind is blowing.
One wonders how the MSM is going to craft an approach to finally covering a major story that they have studiously avoided for three weeks. I’m reminded of the deer in the headlights look of several newscasters reporting on Van Jones leaving his czar post as a result of a simmering to boiling controversy that they had never bothered to mention before the fact. Perhaps they will at some point begin to realize that single minded repetition of the preferred mantras of their ideological cohorts can only lead them to profound embarrassment and inevitable irrelevance. They might even decide to return to the notion of journalism as a provider of information that is as objective as possible, but I’m not holding my breath for that one.
The data will be in just after the November 2012 election.
The classic line in this is:
“The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.”
Do we really have them that terrified?
I’m getting bored with Climategate.
Can’t we get on with NASAgate now.
The Met and the UN is assuming we will trust any of their “scientific” studies and the “results.” We already don’t trust any politicians and now the majority don’t trust scientists either. This is what happens when you cry wolf too many times or did scientists forget the moral behind that age old story.
The person who leaked these emails is a true hero and eventually needs to be recognised for bringing truth and transparency to the climate debate.
If truth and transparency leads to a world that acts in the best interest of all people then I say give Obama’s Nobel prize to whoever this person is.
Cheers
Michael
The consideration here is not to wait three years for the result, but to ensure that the data is placed in front of the public on an ongoing basis, that any raw numbers presented are cross-checked against other available sources as openly as possible, so that there’s no possibility of being presented with an alarmist fait accompli somewhere down the road that then has to be unwound AGAIN for a real understanding of what was done.
I ♥ ClimateGate
Nothing to see here. Move along.
‘The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics’.
Is this true?
Just what are we supposed to read into this?
How scary is this?
“The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.”
The government is trying to stop the science?
In this bizarre game of AGW Snakes and Ladders the warmers have landed on one big, fat, beautiful snake’s head. Does it spiral down to the third square from the Start or just to the foot of the ” It’s worse than we could have imagined” ladder?
Whatever the never-to-be-achieved accuracy of THE WORLD’S TEMPERATURE over time, CO2 is NOT THE CAUSATIVE AGENT to ANY “warming of the planet”! Neither is MAN the CAUSE of same! Nor are we in “imminent danger” if we “fail to act”!
It is GOOD to be “warmer” than “colder”, to which I can attest as a Northern resident. We can access many forms of evidence over geologic time which proves this.
Unfortunately, the “train has left the station.” The elite of the world have been setting up and investing in their wealth with their CO2/energy scheme for at least 40 years, and the transfer of wealth CONTINUES to be to the world-wide entities which engineer it all, and all the tag-alongs who can possibly jump on. The gap between “haves” and “have-nots” grows…
I do appreciate the huge efforts of the truly credible scientists who hang in there and who, through their efforts, have finally been able to effectively expose some of the scandalous methods and deceptions of those who have engineered this movement. It gives hope…
It really doesn’t matter who does the re-analysis or how long it takes (they probably said “three years” to give casual readers a feel for the scope of the problem and to dampen expectation of immediate results) as long as it really is “fully open”. If they reassemble the raw data from world met offices, create a grid, make their adjustment, etc, and the method is either open during the process or open at the end, they will either get it right or not and everyone with an interest either way will be able to check for themselves.
I’ve had two of my comments censored – meaning completely deleted at Realclimate. And a post mutilated by selective censorship.
I said that the constant stream of visitors thanking Gavin for posting (and ‘moderating’) at Realclimate should pause for a moment and thank the guy/gal who leaked the emails instead. A single-handed effort that resulted in all the debate. In Jones’ resignation, in the UN inquiry, in the UK Met review of data….
I’ll wear Gavin’s censorship like a badge of pride.
Let the globe warm up and let all of it drown and take us – at least we would have lived with integrity.
They know the “trick” they used to “add value” to their data, so if they really dumped the raw data they can subtract the “tricky added value” from the present values in their database and go back to the truth –if they really want to recover the original temperature data. Won’t be holding my breath, though.
But, who cares anyway? By 2012 according to the Mayans the end of the world will have put and end to this debate. At last!
Everybody will be happy, even Jones, Mann, Hansen, and Gore -if we find out that Hell doesn’t exist… 🙂
The pods are moving in, boys. Help.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6729833/Gordon-Brown-climate-change-sceptics-are-flat-earthers.html
I’d say that this is a stunning development. If the Met Office is sincere, it will invite participation by scientists who have no stake in either AGW or skepticism. It will establish a web site where all the material and all the analysis can be available to anyone who cares to down load it. There should be a mechanism to address issues raised by “citizen scientists”. At the same time we somehow need a mechanism to prevent ideologues from gumming up the analysis….
It’s not just reanalysis that’s needed, however: let’s take a billion or so and invest it in a REAL and robust climate monitoring network. We’ve been taking instrumental data that was never intended for the use to which it’s been put to monitor climate. How about a purely climate-oriented network?
Oddly enough, I’d agree that the type of research Micheal Mann has been doing is important. I think he let himself be seduced by the Dark Side. I’d advocate more money for dendroclimatology, but none for Mann.
Again I ask how can we see to it that Obama gets the message that we do not want anything to do with the Copenhagen treaty with its massive taxes, world government control and re-distribution of wealth?
Anthony, I’ve mentioned this before:
Tom in Texas (18:56:37) :
E.M.Smith (17:04:44) : The “raw” data is nowhere to be found… Maybe the raw dailies are on line somewhere? But Iv’e not found them yet…
E.M. – I tracked the U.S. raw data from the B91 forms to CLIMOD. The compiled raw data is available from the Regional Climate Centers (6?) for a fee. It is probably only useful for doing regional studies.
BTW, I have verified that it is raw by comparing it to B91 forms. Missing data indicates also that it is truly raw. (Looked at a lot of B91’s).
I have “collected” the raw data for San Antonio and all stations within 100 miles. Maybe I should expand the range.
Will the MET be able to identify and separate out the Urban Heat Island?
McKitrick and Michaels:
Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data Ross R. McKitrick and Patrick J. Michaels
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 112, D24S09, doi:10.1029/2007JD008465, 2007
Nicola Scafetta finds much larger solar influence than assumed by IPCC, and which projects well the older historic data.
N. Scafetta, “Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change,” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2009), doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2009.07.007.
Then Don Easterbrook finds a major influence by the PDO and projects consequent global cooling and warming cycles.
Ferenc Miskolczi finds the global atmospheric absorption trend is effectively zero for the last six decades.
With the Urban Heat Island causing half the increase, solar, PDO taking up the rest, and with no enhanced absorption, what is left of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming?
Maybe that is why the Met is taking so long to review the data.
For more details see the 2009 NIPCC report Climate Change Reconsidered.
“However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.”
This is the line they can be held to. Publish the data, and publish the methods by which they analyse the data.
evanmjones (20:11:11) :
I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out its (drumroll) Worse Than We Thought.
If it turns out worse than we thought, then so be it. I’d rather be wrong and understand how I came to be there rather than right, but only because I followed the herd.
This is, if not an abject surrender, then at least a pell-mell retreat. The Met Office has as good as confessed that CRU’s stuff is hopelessly corrupt and useless. That is a major tactical victory!
Of course, that means that the warmmongers will have GISS as their only principal dataset. Now if we can shine some sunlight into that roach-nest….
I call bs on the ‘seized on by skeptics’ line. That is a completely bogus reason to ignore a completely relevant problem. If it weren’t ‘seized on’ then what? THEN it would be investigated? If everyone thought worthy of ignoring? What argument, exactly, is this?
This is like saying that a pharmaceutical company should be allowed to hide inconvenient data because lawyers might ‘seize upon it’ and sue the company. Is this really the best excuse so far?! It is just a ludicrous position to take and I think it shows how entrenched the bunker mentality is in climate science. If it damages the theory, it damages mankind? Wouldn’t it be good for us if this theory were bunk?!
I better stop here and go outside and get some fresh air.
If they do this we go back to what Anthony has been working on and what Steve M has been looking at for a long time. Those things are A: the quality of the station data to begin with and B: the “adjustments” applied to compensate for UHI.
Harold Vance (20:09:18) :
How do they know that they analysis will take three years? Why not two? Why not four?
————
Perhaps three is the agreed upon severance package ??
“the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.”
How do they know it will be a warming trend ?? Oh yeah, of course I forgot that in bogus climate science land, the conclusions always precede the data.
Wouldn’t it be better to get these clowns out now and get some real scientists in to scoop up their excrement, throw it out and start again ??
By the way warmists (if there are any left on here), my point is not that it won’t be a warming trend, it’s that assuming such prior to analysing the data is below the level of science at which you can still tell your Mum you’re a scientist. So why do they put that in a fricking press release ?? Because they’re such sh!# scientists they can’t even comprehend what I’m talking about.
To do this right will be a real nightmare, each site will have to be history corrected for equipment modifications and area build changes, and then each record aligned with others and then make educated wildass guesses on all the areas not sited.
No damn wonder Jones, Mann, Hanson and many others faked it.
As long as the reconstruction is open and public so the rest of us can see how this can of worms is untangled I see no problem, If it’s done behind closed doors they will be as discredited as the last group.
And wait a second! How are they going to review the data if it was thrown out?!
Oh, should have read the comments. Beat to it, but still!
If it turns out worse than we thought, then so be it. I’d rather be wrong and understand how I came to be there rather than right, but only because I followed the herd.
Yes, obviously. But what I am really saying is I Don’t Trust Them.
Unless it’s all out in the open (code, methods, reasons, documentation) and we have genuine raw data (as in “not reconstructed”), and unless it is done by impeccably honest folks (from either side of the debate), I ain’t buying.
I’d rather have a different institution, altogether, handling it.
Met Office, not the most trustworthy party to undertake this re-examination?
Three years of work meaning three years of “uncertainty”? No problem!
That’s why the precautionary principle was introduced as a political fail safe to continue Government induced CO2 mitigation policies no matter what!!!
We go to Copenhagen, set the agenda for the next meeting in Mexico and take on the open offer. Remember? Free Sex!
Hurrah.
Although your US readers might not appreciate it this is the most important news, despite political pressure the Met Office now knows it has been led up the garden path and isn’t having any. It is the oldest and most prestigious of all scientific weather recording and forecasting institutions and will not risk its reputation on a fraud: nor will it bow to political pressure to do so. Hence its refusal to do as the British government bids.
It may have made a mistake in putting its trust in the CRU, but we all make mistakes as the hedgehog said clambering off the hairbrush. And that happens in science too: especially if your trust that your colleagues are not forging the datasets. But the moment it becomes apparent they were you have to start again.
All it will say at the moment is that it now needs to check the data.
But that is hugely important. The very basis of the AGW/IPCC reports and claims that the science is settled depends on the Met Office data. Without it the whole thing falls apart especially in the UK.
Very interesting they announced it to the Times of London first, too late for the rivals to get it for the Saturday papers, expect the Sundays to be full of it. Very careful timing that: along with the statement that they had already written to all the other weather services asking to release the raw data.
So watch the fireworks flow? or should that be go up? It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. But I think she may be onstage soon.
Kindest Regards
this is hilarious….so is THIS big enough news to get a little more notice in the MSM?
Good to hear this on a very cool evening. Reassessing is the right course.
I wouldn’t be too alarmed at what seem to be differences from recent announcements. The gang at CRU and Met is baffled, they really aren’t up to making sense right now.
The cynic might note this gives them three more years of employment and gives them a big “do not disturb, science at work” sign too.
This will be another reason to not deliver data and methods beyond what is already revealed. For, they have moved on. They are going to need more money too. Wonder where that will come from?
But to be fair, what else can they do?
CRU and Met is not the law. They cannot toss any rascals in jail or alter policies involving energy to millions and the entire economy.
And tyey cannot defend the results to date because no one really understands them matter now.
That is, no one knows exactly what data was used, how it was corrected, and which versions of which code was used.
No doubt some of that original data, even that not destroyed, used obsolete encoding, on obsolete magnetic or paper formats, and was processed by computer and operating systems long gone. Using compilers and/or languages now only memories.
The last alternative to reassessing would be to suspend activity at CRU, fire a lot of people near the top, and rebuild rom scratch. They certainly won’t do that.
Downstream this will lead to revisiting the published papers that used the data and deciding what the papers would have said with that data excluded or suspect.
All eyes and ears on Copenhagen. CRU, a big science institution, has had a setback. Politicians and bureaucrats and administrators will not pause so readily. We are talking of taxes, power, and their prestige.
US and Australia? Isnt it supposed to read US and Canada? 🙂
Follow the money. Follow the money. I wish I was a forensic accountant. I could have a lot of fun with this. We’re talking billions, maybe trillions of dollars at stake worldwide. Climategate has only begun to shave off a little bit of the iceberg, but getting the mainstream media in this country to get into the act would help to put a few more cracks in it. Last I heard, it was 14 days and counting and no reports on the morning or evening newscasts on NBC, ABC, or CBS. Albore continues to pontificate as he hides from potential embarassment. Follow the money, someone, please!
each site will have to be history corrected for equipment modifications and area build changes
Oh, forget it. USHCN can’t even get its station moves right. Anywhere near right. Much less anything resembling a decent SHAP!
I’ve spent many hours poring over their pathetic station records and it never fails to horrify. There is no way on the green hills of god’s green earth that CRU will get the Station History anywhere near correct, even if they could–which they can’t.
As best as I can tell, there ought to have been strong cooling adjustments going forward from 1900 and progressing. Instead, NOAA had warming adjustments the whole way, exaggerating USHCN station measurement from +0.14C/century to +0.59 (ave. per station).
Yeah, I’m betting that the raw data will be near flat and yet it will somehow come out the other end of Hadley’s stars-upon-thars machine warmer than it did with HadCRUt3.
Fine, but this time NO “fudge factor,” dammit!
It may take 3 years to finish, but we will know far sooner if it is actually open (and points to them if it is). Assuming it is, it will take far less time than three years to know if the land based temperature sets are corrupt. I guess we know that already to a certain extent, but it would be great to know more details there.
It will also take a short time to know if they are open like the IPCC or open like science is supposed to be (benefit of the doubt given for sure). If the data is open and they aren’t, that usually results in what is known as a ‘fork’ in the open source world (a parallel effort with slightly different goals). For forks of this kind (towards less friction), the open fork almost always swallows the original project.
It is a very positive step I think. Sounds like it is coming from grassroots within too, certainly not top down from the gov’t at least. Even better. Most people have class if they are allowed to unhook from the machine.
Those on the inside are reading unreleased e-mails. Me thinks they came across some more seriously damaging crap they are not telling us about. Maybe they alerted BO about this and that being the reason for the delay to Cophenhagen.
Not only do those 188 countries need to be open and transparent with their data, they need to make an open and transparent survey of all their contributing stations, so that an appropriate correction can be placed on the data. Poor station produce poor data. You can imagine what the condition of the rest of the worlds stations are in, when you consider that the USA stations are supposed to be the best in the world and about 90% of the surveyed stations are either in a poor state of disrepair, or are poorly placed. See Anthony Watts station survey link: http://www.surfacestations.org/
The statement, about the Government trying to stop the re-examination, is the ultimate insult to human intelligence. If data, or information can’t stand up to skeptics, than it is of no scientific value. Only when it can stand up to skeptics, does it have value and becomes useful. The leaked emails are the epitome of an insult to the scientific method! Only in a religious context are we justified in accepting a belief on blind faith. While politicians would like us to accept everything on blind faith, it is not appropriate in science.
Stephen
Expect counter-attacks sounding like this:
“We have no reason to believe they were substantially wrong. And we can not delay, drastic action is needed now. We have less than XX months.”
signed,
Al Gore and,
United Nations Agency For Polar Bears, (of All Colors and Creeds.)”
Of course we know the earth acts just like a greenhouse. After all, its in a crystal sphere surrounded by heaven. Nothing can get in or out. (I think those points of light outside are the angels)
I have no doubt whatsoever that the raw data will be recovered. I also have no doubt that it will NOT be accomplished by any government entity. It will be accomplished by real scientists that do not get funding only from any government or any other organization that stands to gain from the knowledge. This effort must be funded with ONE infusion of cash from the beginning from a combination of government and private funding…. the only guideline, truth… a three year study by the foremost physicists of our time, with the understanding that there will be no further funds available after that three period. The task must be accomplished with all available data… real scientists above reproach selected by a committee comprised of physicist who are also above reproach. All CO2 studies, procedures and protocols will also be examined… let’s put truth on the table…
It needs to be completely re-done by independent scientists. And all of it needs to be done completely in the open. There should be no need for FOIAs.
All stations should be reviewed to see if they comply with siting standards. If they don’t comply they don’t get used.
All corrections for time of observation, type of instrument etc must be agreed upon ahead of time and be made fully public. In my opinion UHI cannot be accurately corrected for, so only rural stations should be used. But that’s just my opinion. The scientists should figure it out. But the means of making the adjustment must be analytically determined and be made public.
The longer it all takes, the better. The actual weather is casting doubts, the emails only help to reinforce the doubts. It is snowing tonight in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Seattle is expecting snow and is experiencing ice. We have reached a tipping point, but not in the way the warmists predicted.
This is pure speculation, but one has to wonder if there has been some quiet scrutiny of the data and processing methods going on behind the scenes. If the scientists and technical people involved in processing the data set had confidence that the current code and data product could be independantly verified and validated, then why would they undertake such a radical step?
So if the Hadley data is out cold for 3 years at least, NASA data under investigation, BOM data shown to be doctored also, satellite data showing a cooling trend, solar slumber continues on – then where will our governments go from here?
I just looked at the B91 forms for my local site (concord wwtp) and found many missing pages and a non recorded location change. The station was at the Concord Waste Water Treatment Plant until 1972. Station data starts in 1971 and goes to Dec 1972 listing Concord Wastewater Plant as the Station, then picks up again (with gaps) in Aug 77 listing CCCSD Treatment Plant as the Statin. In 1976 the construction of the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (CCCSD) Waste Water Treatment Plant was finished and the Concord WWTP was converted into a pump station. The station was apparently moved to the new CCCSD WWTP . The CCCSD WWTP is 1.8 miles north of the Concord WWTP and has much more of a marine affect as it is 4 miles from the Suisun Bay instead of 6 miles for the old Concord WWTP. I have lived in this are since 1960 (and remember the very cold 1970s) and am an engineer at the CCCSD WWTP.
If this poor consistency of data gathering and lack of station move information is typical then the couple of degrees F increase that we are supposed to have had since the 1800s is impossible to document.
The promise of openness and transparency sounds great. The first litmus test will be the structure, process and findings of the UEA CRU investigation. There maybe a lot of Alka Seltzer consumed over the next few weeks by certain individuals! Of course, Steve, Anthony et al may also need it but for a different reason. 😉
Perhaps some of you more climate-trained folks can enlighten me. I’ve followed the various comments here for a few years, but one thing strikes me as problematic. Given a series of temperature readings, expressed as a range of numbers over time, is there ANY generally-accepted procedure that EVERYONE would agree to, as to how to process that data?
It occurs to me that if I tossed a data set of temperatures over time to 1,000 different climate statisticians with the challenge “plot the smoothed average over time,” I would get 1,000 different answers. It’s almost as if, in my field of expertise, there was no agreement of what “one volt” meant. How can there be any agreement over anything if no one agrees on a measurement standard?
As long as we’re going to start all over again, will there be some sort of generally-accepted standard used to massage the data?
REPLY – Short answer: No. (Long answer: Hell, no!) ~ Evan
The voting public needs a list of all the politicians who are on the record for supporting man-made gloabl warming and vote them out of office. The Australians know how to do it. Let’s follow their lead.
@Dave Wendt (20:19:20)
Your wish has been granted as of Dec 4th.
The NBC Nightly news covered Climategate and was then roundly trashed by Media Matters of America:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200912040052
But wait that’s not all!
MSNBC cover it as well and (gasp) even went after a warmer:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2009/12/04/msnbc-s-dylan-ratigan-slams-climategate-fakery-when-will-nbc-do-same
I know you have be asking yorself if you fell down the rabbit hole behind Alice
OR
Could it be the sale of NBC to Comcast (Comcast now owns 51% of NBC/MSNBC/CNBC) on Dec 3rd had a slight change in editorial control.
Tom in Texas (20:32:12) :
BTW, I have verified that it is raw by comparing it to B91 forms. Missing data indicates also that it is truly raw. (Looked at a lot of B91’s).
What was you experience when you saw that both the raw data and the B91 forms are missing, but you have a station file list that says there was an observer for the missing period?
a jones (20:43:12) :
I agree with you. Now if GISS, NASA and NOAA would be so forthcoming.
Where are the trolls?
Send in the trolls!
Let us make sport!
twawki (20:02:09) :
How could our governments make any policy on climate alarmism when so much has been revealed.
ANS: Cuz it’s all about Power and NOTHING to do with Climate. PERIOD. It never was about Climate, geeze. How come this is so difficult to understand?
Here Comes Everybody.
It will not be a private investigation. Here we are., and we are not going away.
Please turn this physics paper over in your minds,if you can.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
After reading that, HOURS, I’m trying to get my family scientists to read it but I can’t! They are busy.
It convinced me that this is not even based in chemistry and physics. (Then it isn’t science).
Its computer pseudo-science, nothing better than tabloid crap.
Even the greenhouse effect is a complete myth.
I thought the ”tipping point” on ClimateGate might not come until and unless the BASIC countries walked out of COP15; or some later event if they didn’t walk. I may have to ”revise and extend my remarks”:
If the Met Office has officially announed they will ”re-examine 160 years of temperature data”, seems like we’re tipping pretty hard already (at least I sure hope so).
And if at COP15 a real journalist has the guts to ask various leaders:
”What about the Met Office saying they are going to re-examine all 160 years worth of data: Shouldn’t you wait to see those results before you kill the world economy ?”
. . . . Well, it will be interesting to see what kind of answers the AGW acolytes reach for; i.e.: In the MSM they might get away with trying to dismiss a lot of people as ”skeptics”, but dismissing the Met Office should be considerably harder.
SIDEBAR: Meanwhile, back at google.com/trends :
Besides the continuing growth of raw hits on ClimateGate, the most interesting stat is the sharp and continuing steady rise in NEWS REFERENCE volume for ClimateGate since 29 November; after being largely flat for a week. Darn: Almost looks like another Hockey Stick. ;-]
FOOTNOTE: ClimateGate now @ 31,700K raw hits on Google; while ”Climate Change” is still stuck down in the 22,200K range. Not even a contest anymore.
Well, to me, this sounds too good to be true. And when something sounds too good to be true it usually isn’t good at all. Smoke, mirrors and Chinese handshakes is all I see.
But what I am surprised (Well, OK, not actually) about is the number of pro_AGW supporters now labeling sceptics as “flat earthers”. Gordon Brown’s use of thr term in particular surprised me. What are they affraid of, the truth?
“This is pure speculation, but one has to wonder if there has been some quiet scrutiny of the data and processing methods going on behind the scenes. If the scientists and technical people involved in processing the data set had confidence that the current code and data product could be independantly verified and validated, then why would they undertake such a radical step?”
Yeah, I guess more than just Harry read Harry_Read_Me.
How much has all the stuff we’ve turned up has gotten out to the typical person though? They might be buying the line that all we’ve found is a few e-mails that are embarrassing but don’t show anything damaging.
At least it looks like the forecast for Copenhagen getting snowed on amid cold, blustery winds might turn out to be right.
Notwithstanding the checking of 160 years of back data, I note a relativey lengthy period where solar sunspots are absent and solar flux is in the low 70s – one would indeed expect cooling of the earth. What about the fact it went up last month by 0.25 of a degree??
Hockystick part 2
“The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.”
They said over the summer that they destroyed all the original data in various office moves. How can they have a new analysis of what they destroyed?
Oh, Met Office is not the same as CRU? So maybe Met Office has the original data? Was that clear in the earlier release from CRU about destroyed data? Or is this more pea and walnut shell manipulation?
Openness would be welcome, but the history here is not encouraging. Perhaps someone should file an FOI request/demand for the original data to be posted on the web and see what happens.
If it really is a completely “open” effort, then great. But I have my doubts. The IPCC reports are supposed to be written using an open process too, and look at how that turned out.
Don’t trust them…period!
The best explanation I have read.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/the-buy-side/dont-let-climategate-melt-down-your-portfolio/article1389653/
then where will our governments go from here?
Hopefully back to their proper roles, like protecting our borders, coining money and leaving everything else to the people of the individual states. But I am sure the politicians will invent another crisis to take more control our American rights.
How many temperature measurement stations might there be which need to be included in the complete data base?
How many of those already have the real, authentic, unaltered original measurement data put into digitized data bases?
Do a random sample of the digitized data to see whether it matches the data in the original form in which the data was recorded.
Go get the rest of the data and put it into digitized data bases.
Pay the national met offices who don’t want their data in the public domain, so they can go home and roll in their dough–it’s bound to be cheaper than the cost of unwarranted carbon dioxide emission limits.
Put the data in the public domain. Let everyone who wants to examine it do so.
Who knows how many different ways there might be to adjust the data for real, genuine, honest reasons? Who cares? Put them all out there and see what difference it might make–then scrutinize the outliers to see if they are plausible.
It shouldn’t take 3 years, unless they don’t get some really good programming experts involved at the beginning to build the code to implement the adjustments in a way that everyone can see–not in a “black box.”
But even if it takes 3 years, I’ll wait.
I think I have died and gone to Heaven! Any way you cut it, the mantra that “the science is settled” is dead meat when the Met Office, of all institutions, makes the concession it just made. I’m guessing that by now some of those long-suffering computer programmers in CRU have been interviewed by beady-eyed lawyers trying to assess institutional liability for the Big Dogs. I’m guessing the Big Dogs have gotten an ear-full.
When Al Gore is “hiding out” you just know its been a good day for TRUTH.
Now, about that boy Hansen’s work over in the U.S.?
CH
“REPLY: you can look at the B91 forms in PDF form from the observer here:”
Anthony If we were to take on that task would we need to record daily temperature readings or just the monthly average max and min which is recorded on the form?
REPLY: Daily high/low
I think that there is more to it than just a re-examination of the data…….my guess is that the ‘leaker/hacker’ is known to have more in the way of files that can be released.
I hope so.
When all is said and done, the scientific community must quantify the affect of man’s CO2 contribution, within reason, and give us an actual number or percentage of man’s influence on the temperature of the planet relative to all other non human influences. Did I say that right?
The UK may just be preparing to skip the whole mess.
Sounds like a good enough Get-out-of-jail-card to me.
Met office says 3 years at least, the next rationale would be:
“What are we going to Copenhagen for, lads?. Right. Miss MoneyPenny, would you please send this cancellation to COP15 right away. Courtesy of Mr. Bond. James Bond.”
Think we should engage Jimmy Carter to supervise the re-count of the temperature record.
12/5/2009 12:45:44 AM
“Met Office to re-examine 160 years of climate data
Ben Webster, Environment Editor
The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.
The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012….”
So with what data? the lost ones? LOL
Funny the same work was already done for New Zealand and showed no warming at all…
You can bet it won’t take that long for the code and weighting station tricks to be exposed.
Lady in Red (20:29:12) :
The pods are moving in, boys. Help.
Help is on the way. Have no fear.
Quick….destroy them before they hatch!
——————————
Is Gordon Brown for real? He can actually stoop so low to the “flat-earth” comment??
Ironically, it is THEY that are the flat-earthers, not us.
The pseudoscience of the AGW religion is the ESSENCE of “flat-earth”!!
Chris
Norfolk (not East Anglia) VA, USA
If this poor consistency of data gathering
30% missing. And that’s just for the US (which is considered superior).
and lack of station move information is typical
Yes.
then the couple of degrees F increase that we are supposed to have had since the 1800s is impossible to document.
Pretty much. Though we must try. At least bang together the best raw data record we can.
twawki (20:02:09) : I believe you misspoke. I think you meant to say:
Copenhagen needs a SnowCheck, I mean a raincheck.
Yeah, I agree. What is the point in painting the town red when the bottle is empty? Stay home, Obama, you got enough places to go, people to bow to and things to do as it is.
The key point is that now that HADCRUT has been seriously compromised, all supercomputer models that were “a perfect match for the HADCRUT” just means they all fidgetted with the parameters to make their models fit the curve!
Their credibility is gone.
I’ve had two of my comments censored – meaning completely deleted at Realclimate. And a post mutilated by selective censorship.
Anand: I had five of my ten comments to RealClimate censored or edited when I kept pushing Gavin about just this issue of releasing all the data and methodology behind the AGW findings.
This news from the UK Met service is great!
The Met office has a ton of data for the UK at least. I downloaded temperature readings for Armagh (Northern Ireland) from their website that date back to 1865 now i assume they got these readings from the Armagh Observatory which actually has records available since 1844. 20 odd years being omitted. Now assuming that the Observatory standardised its data correctly you would expect this data to appear in the Met office data. Met office data appears to be rounded to one decimal place, however where some monthly mean data seems to be rounded correctly there are many months that are not. Why some months are ok and others not, is beyond me.
Here is the data if anyone is interested.
Met Office data sheets
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/armaghdata.txt
Armagh Observatory
http://climate.arm.ac.uk/calibrated/airtemp/index.html
Junkscience has made a graph of this data showing no unusual warming.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a702a1ff970b-pi
Claude Harvey (21:32:17) :
Now, about that boy Hansen’s work over in the U.S.?
We’ll take care of him, but how are we going to deprogram
all the kids?
CRU adjustment procedures:
STEP 1
http://cientifica.eu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/sneetches.gif
STEP 2
http://blog.rifftrax.com/wp-content/photos/sylvester_mcmonkey_mcbean.jpg
I hope someone interviews station attendants in Siberia to find out how much they downshifted their temperature reports during the Soviet era, so a correction factor can be applied.
Wow,
BBC now says Met office DENIES the 3 year examination claim and expects to release the RAW temperature data ” this week” , um, provided 188 countries agree. The Met office says this release will “prove” global warming.
SO – no data until after Copenhagen, but TRUST US, this transparent process will “prove” global warming – after the skeptics have taken 3 years to correct and process it. Mind you, if the Skeptics do not find global warming they will then just be classed as Deniers, and accused of Scientific Fraud.
This is great news.
Hey Anthony – thanks for the NOAA PDF links. It was moving to pull up weather records from 1893 for a weather station that still exists.
Maybe we could do OCR on these things and reconstruct the dataset with software. Of course the results would need to be inspected but you could also have the software try to detect bad OCR conversions with various sanity checks.
Of course it wouldn’t have the normal provenance of peer-review but if you had the dataset and people could verify it against the PDFs maybe that would be enough?
It looks like we might have a real “face-off” and this time at center ice.
If the Met Office is sincere then I wholeheartedly support their proposal. If they truly are going to be open then will need to have neutrality.
This means that all procedures and code must be reviewed by outside experts, not just climate scientists or meteorologists. Any statistics will need to be reviewed by statisticians, and any computer code by programmers. Anything less will look compromised and almost certainly will be considered a white wash.
I doesn’t surprise me that politicians are reluctant to follow the Met Office path. They are ones who allowed the CRU to get away with their shenanigans and are therefore as guilty as Jones and Mann in this scandal.
The three years it will take for this process is just long enough for tempers to calm and egos to deflate. It will matter not a whit to the climate (unless one believes in the most alarmist crede).
The US needs to do the same. They also need to stop the presses on the alarmist meme until this is completed.
The UN cannot be trusted, period.
If at the end of the process, the weight of data supports one side or the other, the governments can and should follow the course that is indicated.
Aha!
The Met bureau will publish the RAW data, but only for 1,000 weather stations.
These will presumably be selected to “prove” global warming, because the Met Bureau has already announced ( in advance of the release that this will prove global warming.
If I had to name two people who have done the most to bring this house-of-cards down, they would be Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. I may be bald, but I’m not going to wear a hat anytime tomorrow. THANK YOU and YOUR MODERATORS/HELPERS.
Reed Coray
This is good.. but it also casts further obfuscation on the entire issue.
The ‘big deal’ is not so much the data and ‘proof of warming’. We KNOW and most of us acknowledge some warming. But beyond that. ….. unethical behavior removed any possibility that the findings of the IPCC can be viewed as having any level of integrity. The level is NONE at all.
Jones, Briffa, Mann, etc. prevented valid science which contradicted, at least in part, the effect of man’s CO2 emissions from consideration in the equation. They are also the key players and authors of the IPCC reports, They also improperly interpreted and or misrepresented the conclusions of work done by others, in some cases causing scientists to QUIT participating in the IPCC. The Met’s review will not change that.
The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct.
This time we’ll do it right…..promise!
Ah yes, the wonderful Met Office who rebranded their Weather website and called it Weather and Climate Change to get the pennies rolling in.
I suspect there are some fairly large portions of humble pie being served up at the moment. Pride comes before a hack.
It is quite amusing to see how the anti-science have developed.
First these emails meant nothing.
Then they were being taken out of context
But wait, there was then an inquiry – so there must be something in it?
So now it seems the warmlings expectation is for a whitewash – I’ve already seen plenty of baiting as if the conclusion of the report is settled in stone. They feel it’s being done by one of “theirs”. They might be due a surprise here too.
And now what the true scientists have been saying all along, that the surface network is trash, has been confirmed as correct thanks to this (for once much needed) revisionism by the MetO.
Fascinating stuff, but I’ll have to replenish my stockpiles of popcorn at this rate.
This last few weeks have been like I’ve been transported to a parallel universe where the right thing sometimes does happen.
Just found this on Iain Dales website
at http://iaindale.blogspot.com/
under “What Happens When You Disagree With Climate Change Fundamentalists”
Refers to Sky news debate (if that’s the word) here…
This project will take three years worth of funding (money keeps rolling in, baby!) and they’ll spit back out the same flawed ideas and untrustworthy temp series.
Michael (20:53:32) :
“Those on the inside are reading unreleased e-mails. Methinks they came across some more seriously damaging crap they are not telling us about.”
If only!
I’ll only believe the Met Office figures if they square with what the GHCN passes off as raw numbers.
I seem to recall that St. Mac had a link somewhere to a zip file over om CA.
Also, if they compare,say, with those New Zealand raw numbers.
“With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know what we must do.”
evanmjones (21:57:38) :
Never before have I had the good fortune to laugh so hard that milk came out of my nose, yet you have provided me with the rare opportunity to enjoy this phenomenon. If only I had been drinking milk at the time, I would not be wondering if I should call the Guinness Book of World Records. If I do, sir, your name shall live forever.
WOW!!! This is quite telling. It means that those now examining the state of everything that went on have absolutely no confidence that things were done properly. If this is done honestly and in the open, then, whatever the results, I’m all for it!
Isn’t it convenient that the analysis (whitewash) will not be completed until the next U.S. Presidential Election year.
And despite all this, something is still rotten in Denmark… Copenhagen to be exact. The AGW movement is about money and power, not science. Even when holes are shot in the science, and proof of fraud is revealed, the AGW train will not be derailed. The rich and powerful are backing it, and they will not be denied. There is a more sinister agenda than environmentalism behind the AGW movement. The exact nature of this agenda won’t be fully revealed until after the tools that they need are in place (Cap and Trade and similar taxation and freedom restrictive laws). I believe that this issue is much deeper than the propaganda.
I don’t think people understand. The Met Office has rescinded the 3 year study now and instead they will release the RAW Data for just 1,000 specially selected Weather stations Next Week to finally prove Global Warming beyond any doubt.
David: Yer check’s in the mail.
Well I Know BBC spin when I see it.
Apparently the Met Office was to release this data shortly.
A MO spokesman denies that it had been concealed or that it had anything to do with Climategate, or that that the Gov’t had put any pressure on the MO on the matter and further that there was no question of a 3 yr reappraisal,
Really? That is not what the Times of London says, and if they did not get it from the horse;s mouth I would be much surprised.
Particularly given the current editor’s green approach.
It sounds like a genuine scoop to me with urgent damage limitation via the BBC.
We shall see: only time will tell.
Kindest Regards.
“Met has preconceived notions, but they also say it will take them three years to examine things.”
How convenient, most people will have either been assimilated by then, senile, or don’t care anymore.
Without some authentication I wouldn’t trust the data they release further than I could throw a toilet and a few gigs of data ran through a value-added grinder.
They could start to build some legitimacy by providing some evidence for this bare arse claim:
“[Met] had already planned to publish the material long before the “Climategate” controversy broke.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
OW!
“With 20,000 delegates, advocates and journalists jetting to Copenhagen for planet Earth’s last chance, the carbon footprint of the global warming summit will be the only impressive consequence of the climate-change meeting.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120403073.html
OT, saw this over at tigerhawk yesterday:
“From a connected and very hard core environmentalist among my Facebook friends (lighten up, guys, she was in my RA group in college 30 years ago):
Good news! Obama will go to CPH on 18th, not 9th. Also expect major announcement re: EPA on Monday.”
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Nothing ever changes, except the weather.
I found myself today, AGAIN, explaining what my position is…
Specifically, it’s not that I don’t “believe”, just that the record as presented to us is NOT CREDIBLE. There are too many questions about mysteriously dropping older temperatures, mysteriously rising recent temperatures, mysterious straight lines showing improbable rising trends when we can look around and see that the last decade has been cooling.
Also, SurfaceStations brought to light the deplorable state of the record, and after the fall of the the Soviet Union the loss of stations completely messed with the record.
If someone were to transparently go through the original records and show some sort of credible warming, and any sort of credible correlation to CO2, then I’d be FINE WITH THAT… heck, I’d be on-board with “solutions” and “tackling” the “problem”.
I have seen absolutely no reason to think that climate in my lifetime is even remotely unusual, and contrary to the warmmongers, I HAVE LOOKED.
Then there is the secondary insanity, where this NOT CREDIBLE temperature record is being used in all kinds of marginally possible scenarios, and presented to a credulous world as “our future”. Complete with “weasel words”, like should, or could, or might. Hundreds, thousands of “peer reviewed” papers are published, which ASSUME that the temperature record is accurate. Since I have genuine concerns about that, I can’t possibly take any of them seriously.
Give me a real, accurate, and CREDIBLE temperature record. Please. And stop dismantling my civilization in the meantime!
oops don’t know why that posted early
Anyone following the EPA CO2 process closely enough to know if they could be announcing new regulations on Monday instead of waiting for the Cap and Trade bill?
Re: D. King (21:56:52) :
Claude Harvey (21:32:17) :
Now, about that boy Hansen’s work over in the U.S.?
“We’ll take care of him, but how are we going to deprogram
all the kids?”
Programming or reprogramming kids is relatively easy. They are fundamentally wired to rebel. You simply give them something “to push against”. So long as AGW advocates could present themselves as “rebels doing good against evil corporations and their lackey governments” the AGW story had great appeal with the youngsters. Curiously, the “warmists” began to lose their natural leverage with the youngsters the instant they became “mainstream”. Once institutions and governments embraced AGW, the youngsters were primed for a new cause. Now, the heroes in the script are underdog “skeptics” doing good against long odds while battling with vested institutional interests.
Give it time and the youngsters will respond. They’re suckers for the rebel cause. Be forewarned, however, that sometime after skepticism goes mainstream the youngster will turn on its adherents like mad dogs. The percentage of the population who have the innate ability to dispassionately discern truth from fiction number no more than 15% according to my informal experiments. The percentage, young or old, who hold truth to be a sacred objective number no more than 5% by my estimation. In spite of that, truth has a tenacious ability to find its way through the human fog.
CH
At last!
And at last some small mentions in the Australian media, including ABC- the trend is “undeniable” (and probably “worse than they thought”).
Regarding the Met office re-assessment, I’m a bit worried- no doubt you’ve heard of the three Great Lies:
1) The cheque’s in the mail
2) I’ll still respect you in the morning
3) I’m from the Department and I’m here to help you.
And regarding Tony Abbott and his budgie smugglers- finally the Opposition has got some balls, in the best sense of the word.
publish the raw and publish the code to “adjust it” with the reasoning behind the code … open source it … we’ll smoke the bastards … we should challenge every station that is improperly located or in a heat island that they refuse to recognize …
It would seem that the Met Office intends to prove AGW by releasing raw data. There is no mention of carrying out any analysis:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
UK’s PM Brown calls sceptics “flat earthers”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/04/flat-earth-climate-change-copenhagen
Obama is going to Copenhagen towards the end of the meeting to attend the conference:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/12/he-ups-the-ante.html
And California’s governor pushes sea level rise in San Francisco: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1232884/Arnold-Schwarzenegger-unveils-dramatic-climate-change-map-shows-flooded-San-Francisco-future.html
This has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics, global governance and taxes. No doubt the battle for truth will continue.
Does the Met office actually have all the raw data? Is Jones aware of this? Will the Met office also have access to the computer code/programs that CRU developed/used? We have either uncovered the tainted work by a bunch of corrupt scientists or the most twisted Machiavellian plot imaginable by the climate change alarmists.
The three years to do the re-analysis consists of one month to write a bit of code to analyse the data, followed by thirty five months to get all the fudge factors included to give the required result.
“The Met Office
worksworked closely with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.”Oh dear, when true love goes wrong.
“The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading body for assessing climate change science.
The organisation’s chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri told BBC Radio 4’s The Report programme the claims were serious and he wants them investigated.
“We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it,” he said.
“We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail.” ”
The chill winds of a scientific climate change blowing through the corridors of the CRU. How will Phil Jones “hide the decline” this time?
Claude Harvey (23:19:08) :
“The percentage of the population who have the innate ability to dispassionately discern truth from fiction number no more than 15% according to my informal experiments. The percentage, young or old, who hold truth to be a sacred objective number no more than 5% by my estimation. In spite of that, truth has a tenacious ability to find its way through the human fog. ”
It only took 12% of the colonists support to start this country we call the USA.
@skeptic
Its not all the raw data – just 1,000 specially selected weather stations going back up to 160 years from 188 countries which WILL (MO already tells us) finally “prove” global warming. No models, then, no corrections, no check of prediction vs actual.
Gordon Brown, who thinks that anyone who disagrees with his “The Science is Settled” attitude is a “Flat Earther” is merely showing how shallow a thinker he is.
Post “ClimateGate”, the UK government is desperately trying to bludgeon the average Brit into agreeing to be taxed even more to offset their imagined planet killer – CO2. NoHopenhagen will be yet another scam in the Green hysteric shambles that is the smoke and mirrors Man made Global Warming.
Waving my magic wand I would like to be back in the Medieval Warm Period and sample some of those grapes from Cumbria. Warmer is so much netter than colder. Cheaper too.
BTW No UK enquiry held recently has ever reached the truth it sought. What came out was always how the government spinners wanted it to appear.
Reply: I prefer living in an age where my date bathes and brushes her teeth and I can eat sushi and pizza in the same country. ~ ctm
Here’s how this will go, just like in that past.
The TEAM: AGW is a FACT. The science is settled.
US: Uh, can we look at the data?
The TEAM: DENIERS!!! OUR data is rock solid
US: No, we just would like to see the data, it doesn’t seem to match up.
The TEAM: DENIERS!!! OUR data is purer than the Virgin Mary.
US: Well, actually, if you look, you might have made a mistake here…
The TEAM: Uh, yea, there might be a small clerical error, but it does nothing to disprove the science, WHICH IS SETTLED.
US: No, actually it seems that a LOT of your premises were wrong, and it sort of messes up your whole theory.
The TEAM: Deniers!!! Everything in that report is 110% accurate
US: Actually, we’ve shown this data to tons of scientists, and almost all of them agree that the data has been manipulated.
The TEAM: You mean THAT data? Ha, where have you been? We don’t use that data anymore, stupid – you just don’t understand the science, which is settled.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
So it will take them 3 years to reanalyse the data – perhaps the could get Steve McIntyre to help and cut it down to a few months.
John Simpson (22:47:21) :
I don’t think people understand. The Met Office has rescinded the 3 year study now and instead they will release the RAW Data for just 1,000 specially selected Weather stations Next Week to finally prove Global Warming beyond any doubt.
It’s a start. We will of course compare the data with old plots we have lying around to check they aren’t fudging.
This is an Admission of Guilt… They admit that the temperature record is corrupt and/or fraudulent.So begins the first step on the long road back to Scientific integrity.
As this is proof that the previous effort was political and secret and may indeed be again…. Great effort must be made to include all Prominent sceptics and for the data and methodology to be accessible to all, including the non scientific general public, the British taxpayer who has spent so much money so far in this sad situation.
What happened to the HadCRUT Temperature series must never ever happen again.
Judge Napolitano and Steve Milloy On Climategate
3 years to reassess the data is about the time for Harry to have lost all his hair trying to create CRUTEM3.
Maybe we could get Steve McIntyre to oversee the reconstruction. Might get done right and in only six months
and if three years from now, after a true open forum, the temp record looks quite the same, then can we move on to the real issue? i.e. the forcings….
I live close to the Met Office in Exeter. On Monday I will be personally delivering a letter addresed to Vicky Pope which contains details of my web site (updated yesterday)
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
It includes temperature data pre 1850 plus numerous articles and links so they can back before the 160 years they mention.
I will be asking the met office to re-examine their patently absurd position here;
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/policymakers/policy/slowdown.html
Extract “Before the twentieth century, when man-made greenhouse gas emissions really took off, there was an underlying stability to global climate. The temperature varied from year to year, or decade to decade, but stayed within a certain range and averaged out to an approximately steady level.”
I will point out that the statement is against ALL the evidence demonstrated in temperature data and observations made for three thousand years.
I will also invite Vicky Pope and her colleagues to travel a bare 15 miles North to Dartmoor, where some of the most famous examples in the world exist of previous climate chgange. Ruins from the Bronze age and medieval strip systems and farmsteads from the MWP were all abandoned when the inhabitants were forced to leave the moors when the climate cooled.
I suspect that they will steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the myriad strands of evidence out there that demonstrates that their scientists need to get outside more and stop relying on their computers and statistical manipulation of dubious statistics.
Anyone else like to put a (metaphorical) signature to the letter?
Tonyb
at least they say the data would be availabe for all who wish to study it.. do i get this right?
but then again, Obama promised before the elections, that his administration is going to be a very transparent one…;[
“fears that influential sceptics in other countries, including the US and Australia, are using the controversy to put pressure on leaders to resist making ambitious deals for cutting CO2.”
Put pressure on politicians to act in a sane manner! I’ll drink to that.
Well I wish them good luck in their endeavor to recover any semblance of credibility.
They WILL need it.
On 29 Nov., 2009, Eric S. Raymond had this to say:
“I’ve long thought the AGW case was built on sand, but it’s worse – it’s built on utter vacuum. Somebody will have to do the work of collating raw historical data from the weather stations and time periods the CRU mined all over again before we will know anything about the quality of their results. A significant portion of the climatological literature — everything that used CRU reconstructions or models as an input — will have to be outright scrapped.” [emphasis added]
Note the second and third sentences. The entire article is here: Facts to fit the theory? Actually, no facts at all!.
cheers,
gary
Anyone know anything about a PR firm called Ogilvy? Seems they are running false climate ads through Google claiming that the number of Cat 5 and Cat 4 hurricanes have doubled and that apparently you can sign a petition to stop that. Saw the ad running at weather underground and the ad gives a link to a domain called “hopenhagen.org”. It is just plain nuts. The entire ad campaign is based on false information. But people going to that weather site will likely believe the ad if they trust wunderground.
Reply: Ogilvy and Mather is an international advertising agency. ~ ctm
We have to make sure we don’t lower the bar too far here. When the MET says they feel an open review will conclusively prove “global warming” we have to make sure we demand a detailed definition of what that means (and what it doesn’t mean). Personally I don’t doubt that the globe has warmed over the last 160 years. As a matter of fact I think it is pretty well established that the earth has been in a steady gradual warming trend since the end of the Little Ice Age.
In this sense “global warming” is NOT the issue that the UN/IPCC is using as justification for massive spending and a socio/economic overhaul of world government. Man-made warming, or more specifically Man-made runaway warming, IS the issue.
It seems in order to justify the IPCC’s proposed solutions “global warming” is the least controversial issue that needs “proof”. The following IPCC claims are the most controversial and provide the basis for my, and I suspect many others, skepticism:
1 – The warming we have seen over the last half of the 20th century is unprecedented within the climate history of earth.
2 – This warming has been caused, almost exclusively, by man’s emission of CO2 into the atmosphere.
3 – Continued increases in CO2 will result in a tipping point which will create unalterable run-away exponential warming (Only months left to save the planet!).
It is in THESE areas that the alarmist are on the shakiest scientific ground – and where we need to focus our demand for openness and additional quality research. My biggest concern out of the Climategate emails fall along these issues, specifically their stated intent to rule out the MWP and to “trick” pre-measurement paleoclimatic temperature histories in an attempt to demonstrate a consistent, stable climate history prior to the run-away warming caused by the industrialized age.
We really need to make sure that we don’t allow the alarmist to reduce the debate to simply proving the earth is warming. In order to justify the trillions in spending we must require them to provide proof for all of their claims that imply we are headed toward a certain and irreversible global crisis.
durox (00:04:01) :
at least they say the data would be availabe for all who wish to study it.. do i get this right?
but then again, Obama promised before the elections, that his administration is going to be a very transparent one…;[”
It’s turned out to be, with the help of Fox News.
Amazing, if a little off-topic, I have just been watching a BBC debate between two sceptical viewers and Richard Black about the imbalance of the BBC reporting on the subject.(BBC Breakfast news approx 7:50 am).
Black claimed that even if the Met Office/CRU database didn’t exist that the reality of global warming could easily be proved from the other databases that are available.
He also admitted that the BBC trust (the people responsible for BBC policy) had stated that taking a balanced view was old-fashioned, and that since there was incontravertible evidence of climate change, that contrarian views would not receive equal coverage.
The two sceptics came across as balanced and knowledgable – and Black didn’t really answer any of their criticisms.
http://atmoz.org/blog/2009/12/03/an-open-letter-to-dr-mann/ whats this about?
Also I don’t think is wise to say temps have been declining. The UHA data shows FLAT since say 2001-2002. There is no doubt that before.. that is 1880 onwards it seems that data has been manipulated to make it look cooler than recent (re BRiffa, Santer, Mann et al.). Therefore in fact, temperatures have probably been FLAT since then. That is from 1880 when records started, until today. This will probably come out when the raw data released by all the relevant bodies is analysed. ie Skeptics or deniers don’t have to say temps are declining.. they are FLAT and always have been (with natural variation of course). BTW ask any meteorologist….
H.R. (20:04:43) :
“The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.”
E.M. Smith could probably toss in a few helpful pointers ;o)
Well, If they want my help, I’m available.
If they don’t want my help, well, then I’ll be sitting around with nothing to do but examine in excruciating detail whatever they release with a forensic fine tooth comb and compare it with any prior data I might have available and / or archived so as to reconstruct their reconstruction…
In the tent or out, it makes little difference to me …
The good news is that they are saying the right things. I’d love to get a copy of the “raw” data for 188 countries and do a decent baseline comparison to GHCN AND GIStemp products. I think showing the GHCN “cooked” character would be “useful”.
BTW, my “starters” suggestions would be:
1) First and foremost, “stabilize the instrument”. Stop all the gratuitous thermometer record deletions. You can’t do decent calorimetry if you keep fooling around with the thermometers.
2) Establish a stable baseline set of thermometers. Long lived and well tended. You don’t need to have 4000 thermometers added at tropical airports in the last 30 years biasing the data. This core is used to assess the validity of other set sizes. If it shows no warming, but other set sizes do show warming, you likely have a method error.
3) Get a very good statistician and a very good mathematician to look over any mathematical transform you are doing. Each and every set of math done on the data needs to be vetted as valid. There ‘are issues’ in computer math that really do need a mathematicians eye… From “confessions of a serial averager” to “false precision” to underflow and overflow to ‘typing’…
4) Have a professional computer programmer do the programming, preferably with a professional computer project manager involved.
5) Do it in a relational database product, please. Flat files is so 1970…
6) Have a formal QA step / process. The code needs to so what the spec says. Demonstrably so.
7) Have a formal benchmark step / process. You need to demonstrate that a neutral data set gives neutral results and that a warming set shows warming and a cooling shows cooling. And that none of it is biased.
8) Do regular backups. Store archived sets off site. Have one copy of the raw data put in a vault under the control of an entirely separate agency. Say, the Bank of England… Don’t throw out your intermediate data sets. They are your QA set for future runs / upgrades. Your base QA benchmarks.
9) Show several approaches and the results. Raw data. QA preened data. Homgenized. THEN all the GIStemp / CRUt etc transforms. Now you can compare the raw with the transforms and ask basic ‘sanity check’ questions.
10) Stop re-writing the past for UHI. It’s a hack, and a bad one at that.
11) Don’t use a ‘one size fits all’ UHI. For example, for each site that is an airport, have a flag for ‘first airport use’ and for ‘last airport use’ and for each year in between have a ‘size’ parameter. The airport heat island effect is different at a grass field in 1920 than it is at London Gatwick. For cities, having a single population number is bogus. Take the old census records and put in a population by year table. Right now there is one size for Chicago, what it is now. That is not accurate for 1880…
12) Pay attention to micro climate drivers, such as altitude, distance to the sea, latitude, etc. when using ‘reference stations’ for fill in. Don’t do silly things like adjust Pisa the wrong way by looking at the Alps. When doing UHI, have a simple sanity check to prevent adjusting UHI the wrong way. (GIStemp does this in a significant fraction of the records… 1/4? )
That’s what comes to me “off the top”. Given a couple of hours I could make a much better list.
And I’m really glad to see that the Met Office has the data for which it is seeking permission to release. Nice to know someone had adult supervision.
Oh, and the whole thing ought to be done “open source”. You will get tens of thousands of free programmer hours tracking down every possible bug for you. The quality improvement will be immense. And it’s free.
If there is one person I would trust to analyse the data it’s Steve Macintyre. Note this person is not a skeptic, believer or denier. I note that he has strongly objected to any statements on his blog regarding this matter
I expected them to be an advertising agency … as is Fenton Communications. I was wondering if they were an agenda-based agency as Fenton is.
I think it is interesting that Gordon Brown & (especially) Ed Miliband have firmly nailed their colours to Phil Jones’s mast, coming out with the usual crap about how strong the ‘science’ is and all the myriads of ‘scientists’ who have ‘proved’ AGW to be a genuine huge and scary monster.
So Prof. Jones may have a cute difficulty in expressing himself in emails (perhaps he’s “Special”?) but everything is actually really cosy.
There has been no ‘manipulation’ of data. (Perhaps just ‘tidying’ up some unimportant chart to make it easier for folks to understand).
No data has been destroyed.
No-one has been prevented from publishing.
No-one has been blackballed.
The ‘scientists’ have been entirely open and are seekers after eternal truths.
Whereas those nasty flat-earth deniers are using their petrodollars to hysterically attack personalities because they are incapable of challenging the ‘science’.
You don’t think Bruin & Milipede have already seen the results of the Sir Muir Russell’s Inquiry for the UEA, do you?
Perhaps Russell had to submit it in advance, before he could be appointed.
In a final note. If after Analysis, SM shows graphs that temps are increasing significantly due to C02 I would accept it.
Of course the government don’t wan’t the reassessment to take place. They have dug themselves into a massive financial hole, and green taxes are bound to be a major plank in their efforts to start filling the whole.
Green taxes are instruments which governments must love, because they are seen to be good taxes whereas most other taxes are seen as unfair or punitive by an unhappy populace.
Sadly, this will be the case whichever shade of government is voted in next year. From what I have seen the conservatives are equally committed to generating income through green taxes. As recently as 2 weeks ago my MP, the shadow Chancellor, sent me what has turned out to be a standard letter (at least one other blogger on WUWT has received an identical letter from his MP) the most telling excerpt is:
“The overwhelming balance of evidence mqkes it clear that our economy, our national security and our way of life are under considerable threat if we do not move to reduce the risk of ever-increasing green house gas emissions.”
And as we know, the only way politicians think they can control the activities of their electorate is by taxing them.
Chaps and chapesses, please stop the backslapping.
There will be no “re-analysis” by the Met Office. They are only releasing the raw data. The raw, UHI screwed data. Reworking this will simply show the instrumental record rise that is already recorded.
This is no sea change by the Met Office, its the same behaviour as a gecko dropping its tail to escape a predator.
When I see stuff like: “Fenton Communications will build upon the work conducted for the last two years by Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. ”
and
“She has the benefit of past experience with Spitfire Strategies, Ogilvy Public Relations and Fenton Communications”
and
“In the past, she has led communications for the hospital quality nonprofit, The Leapfrog Group, and for various health and technology clients at Fenton Communications and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.”
I begin to get the impression that they are peas in a pod.
Fenton is an interesting animal. They are all about “astroturfing”. They create issues. They create “movements”. They create the illusion of many different “grass roots” organizations that “spontaniously” spring up on an issue when they are all centrally coordinated and their message managed by Fenton. So rather than having a national issue organization, they would rather split up the people and create several smaller organizations. So if, for example, you have a demonstration that is backed by “the really big movement”, that is one thing. Having a demonstration that is supported by “this little movement”, “that little movement”, “this other movement over here”, makes it seem more popular than it really is.
Fenton is the PR behind Code Pink, Win Without Wars, Veterans For Peace, Cindy Sheehan, etc.
They also created the Alar apple scare many years ago where they created dozens of “grass roots” protest groups to agitate against the use of a chemical called Alar on apples even though not a single person had ever been shown to be harmed by it. It put a lot of apple growers out of business.
Lying is not a problem for these people. It is agenda-based advertising.
Michael (23:52:31) :
Judge Napolitano and Steve Milloy On Climategate
I have to say I’m a bit surprised Steve Milloy of Junk science got hold of the wrong end of the hockey stick in that piece. He said the ‘hide the decline’ phrase refers to the last ten years of temps and attributed it to Mann.
“The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.”
Who is directing this move? Easy one. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a speech yesterday that “People who doubt that human activity contributes to global warming are “flat-earthers” and “anti-science”.
So now you know what the British Prime Minister thinks of Richard Lindzen and the majority of WUWT readers.
How do they know that they analysis will take three years? Why not two? Why not four?
Because that would make it 2012 and the world will end before they have to make a decision?
More seriously, because by 2012 it will be very apparent whether the current cooling phase is a medium term or short term trend. If it hasn’t started warming by then it will as obvious as obvious that the whole CO₂ thing is a crock of s**t. So the Met Office will be able to announce that they have decided that AGW is not likely.
It’s like a psychic making a prediction after the crime is solved.
Tom in Texas (20:32:12) : I have “collected” the raw data for San Antonio and all stations within 100 miles. Maybe I should expand the range.
Didn’t see it before. Threads role through rather fast these days. I’ve saved a copy, thanks.
But thats just the 2% that is US data… Where does one get, for example, the Bolivian or Mexican raw data?
It looks to me like you ether accept the published “value added” (GAK!) products from NCDC / GHCN, or similar agency, or you get to hoof it around the world to 188 countries.
So I’m rather interested in seeing the Met Office release the raw copies… (hope hope hope…)
I agree with you Robert “There will be no “re-analysis” by the Met Office. They are only releasing the raw data. The raw, UHI screwed data. Reworking this will simply show the instrumental record rise that is already recorded.” This is also a con job they will still prove the planet is wayming they have to much inveated not to.
TonyB (00:03:48) :
I live close to the Met Office in Exeter. On Monday I will be personally delivering a letter addresed to Vicky Pope
Signed. 🙂
I agree with Robert Morris. The Met Off have only this year persuaded the Ministry of Defense ( for whom they work) to pay an enormous sum of money < £30 million for a new super computamabal and another massive sum for the gmlobal warming model and new building in Exeter.
They simply cannot find anything except massive human global warming. Theri PR man is an alarmist nut, their director is a chief high priest. Forget it. This will in no way change anything except to show that 'It worse than we thought'.
Three years ? Probably a conference organised in Hawaii that year so that they can all go on a jolly to make their astounding annoucement.
It is likely that the analysis of the Met Office (MO) will show some slight warming over the last half century, though well within the bounds of ‘accepted’ natural variability.
I would be interested to know from Vicki Pope how the MO intends to strip out the ‘natural’ and UHI signals from the temperature record and how the component related to anthropogenic CO2 emmissions can then be detected from the residual. This is all about man-made global warming, isn’t it, and the justification to reduce emissions through taxation?
Bohemond (20:33:33) : Of course, that means that the warmmongers will have GISS as their only principal dataset. Now if we can shine some sunlight into that roach-nest….
And The Smith said: “Let there be light!” :
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/gistemp/
and on NCDC / GHCN too:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/ncdc-ghcn-issues/
and it was good.
And on the seventh AGW scandal, The Smith rested.
And it was very good. 😉
It would seesm that CRu has removed ALL its data this is what you get when you wanna have a look a the data LOL
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/dec/homepagenews/CRUreview
Mighty green of them thar IPCC bottomfeeders.
I can make ’em some new 8×10 glossies, with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one… but they’re version of blind justice, is to close their eyes.
The forth horse of the apocolypse: “chloros” (green) and it’s rider is Death and Hades.
E.M. Smith
have a simple sanity check to prevent adjusting UHI the wrong way. (GIStemp does this in a significant fraction of the records… 1/4? )
WWhoah!
And I’m really glad to see that the Met Office has the data for which it is seeking permission to release. Nice to know someone had adult supervision.
Are we sure this is what they have? Maybe they are talking about restocking with GHCN data.
Re previous HADCRUT etc… above: sorry you get this pagehttp://www.uea.ac.uk/menu/acad_depts/env/cru/
and then
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/dec/homepagenews/CRUreview
Did anyone spot this gem:-
The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.
In other words, the British Government is not interested in the truth, merely looking to cover its sorry … behind.
Those of us who live in the UK will recognise this kind of thinking from what is generally regarded as one of the most corrupt, authoritarian and incompetent governments we’ve had to endure for many years.
“the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.”
Now ask yourself, what major event is slated to happen near the end of 2012 (first week of November 2012, to be precise) and how much money is at stake?
It is absolutely “vital” than they “validate” global warming before the US elections in 2012 else a certain political party is going to be up a creek without a paddle.
Three years, that’s the same timespan as Harrys original project. Certainly looks like Harry got a new assignment at the MET Office. Hope he documents this as well as he did last time.
MetOffice as one of the main centers of world climate alarmism is as reliable as Berija investigating the Katyn massacre. Give it to professional statisticians, since “climatologists” have no clue except massaging data and fabricating trends.
UK PM Gordon Brown froths at the mouth:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091205/wl_uk_afp/unclimatewarmingbritainbrown
In the UK there is no opposition to AGW. All the political parties subscribe to it; it is, as in the a EU a socialist consensus. In the ‘debate’ there are no Republicans or independent Democrats to challenge the dogma of AGW, there are no scientific institutions that offer a single objection to this cobbled together science. In the US of course if they continue to vote as they did in the last presidential election they’ll get a socialist consesus as well.
“influential sceptics in other countries” I wonder who that could be?
We are all conspiracy theorists now.
Of course, the sceptic’s conspiracy theory, that climate science was being gamed by an influential clique, has been proved correct.
The warmists should take note:
48% of WUWT’s readership is international. It’s a global conspiracy to force climate data into the open.
b> Tony Abbott passes first test in his stand against an Energy Taxation Scheme
There were two bi-elections to-day in Australia as a result of Liberal members resigning from politics.
Media commentators were predicting a major swing against new anti-ETS opposition leader Tony Abbott who has been a leader for less than a week.
The backlash the AGW lobby were hoping for has not materialised and there has been virtually no change to voters’ intentions. This is a stunning victory to AGW sceptics all over the world and will give great confidence to Tony Abbott who did not expect such a good result. Kevin Rudd has now felt a few blows to the stomach (above the belt of course) and he may have to re-think his prepared rhetoric when he swans over to Copenhagen.
Comparing HadCRUT with UAH/RSS shows, that during the last 30 years HadCRUT risen by 0.1- 0.2 deg C more than those two. This is easily attributable to UHI affected stations, even stations make only 30% of the HadCRUT – so the UHI can be three times stronger than final increase, diluted with ocean SST.
The question is pre-satellite data, since e-mails revealed CRU plans to massage down the warm 1940 “blip” in newest HadSST3 dataset. Global SST makes 70% of the global dataset, and there were cosniderable changes already made in HadSST2 around 1900 period (of course, to make the whole 20th century to look warming stronger).
Arctic data from British polar ships from early 19th century show, that air temperatures were very similar to present, see http://www.corral.org.uk/digitised-logbook-observations/hms-dorothea-1818 for example.
I assume this puts the HADSST3 release on hold.
I predict, after three years, “OMG, It’s Worse Than We Thought”. Oh, and I’m sorry, but you can’t have the data or workings, we have “X” (insert suitably large figure in here) years tied up in this and you’ll only want to find something wrong with it.
Do it with full input and cooperation from all sides of the debate, or it isn’t worth doing.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change admitted yesterday that it needed to consider the full implications of the e-mails and whether they cast doubt on any of the evidence for man-made global warming.
Much like Pearl Harbor cast some doubt on the assessment that the Imperial Japanese Navy had no power-projection capability beyond the Inland Sea.
Re VG (00:25:30) :
‘In a final note. If after Analysis, SM shows graphs that temps are increasing significantly due to C02 I would accept it.’
And how could they possibly do that other than demonstrating unequivocal positive feedback? When that happens we accept AGW and go home.
“Weather Is Not Climate”
Those meteorological temperature records are proxies for Weather.
And trying to reconstruct Climate from old records of meteorological temperature observations, i.e. weather proxies; is doomed to imprecision.
However man really is warming his own environment, by and large. It is very clear. The UHI effect is proof. QED. So why not stop there?
I think Lewis Carol had it right; The Snark of AGW has turned out to be a Boojum.
If I was the head of the Met Office, the first thing I would have done is call in Harry for a chat and to ask him
“Was it really that bad.”
I would not be surprised if his answer was
“I was trying to make it seem not so bad in the ReadMe, but I have my notes…”
Does anyone have any evidence of Ian “Harry” Harrison spending time at Met Office HQ.
I hope a valient reader will:
1. FOI to Met to list those persons or organizations in other nations (with surface and email addys) who recieved the “request” to release their data to the Met for
review.
2. FOI to Met for a COPY of each separate request sent to those individuals or organizations in
item #1.
3. FOI the Met for copies of any and all email between/among Met employees
and CRU staff or associates transmitted within the past 90 days concerning any
review of the Met’s station and tempurature data, in whole or in part.
Lidt that rock a little higher to see what’s underneath.
The Met’s going to redraw the dots
And sort out the colds from the hots
Maybe by then
The CRU will be men
And the sun will have come out in spots
DeNihilist (23:57:46) : and if three years from now, after a true open forum, the temp record looks quite the same, then can we move on to the real issue? i.e. the forcings….
What are the SI units of a “forcing”? I can’t find “forcing” in my physics book…
As near as I can tell, a “forcing” is a fictional concept, not a physical one.
But I could be wrong… So just tell me the SI units for this physics concept…
A few days ago, I posted how my old mum used to say “Don’t lie to me ‘cos one lie leads to another…….”. First Phil “Cheers” says, You can’t have it, then we lost it, then we on;y have value added………………”
Also yesterday, I posted this :-
Slightly OT but worth considering is the story of Captain Robert Fizroy, who was Captain of HMS Beagle when it took Charles Darwin on his famous expedition to Cape Horn and The Galapagos.
Fitzroy eventually created The Met Office. As a Cartographic Land Surveyor for over 50 years, I can attest to his outstanding abilities as a navigator and cartographer. HMS Beagle did much more than take Darwin to look at finches.
Fitzroy mapped most of Cape Horn, Tierra Del Fuego, Magellan Straits etc. Robert Fitzroy was a much more interesting character than Darwin. He was precise in every detail and meticulous with his records.
I would argue therefore, that his Met Office today would have continued with his standards of excellence, wouldn’t they? Surely they wouldn’t have given all their raw data to these ecowarriors at UEA. The Met Office must still have it. Needs an FOI request from someone who knows what to do with it……….
Now, the Met Office have finally woken up to the fraud, and have decided to cover their backsides, they will of course take several years, so that the public have forgotten it, and be more interested in some celebrity’s shenanigins, you know – really important stuff.
If the new study is to be really open and honest, give it to M & M, they’ll do it quickly and accurately, and more importantly transparently and probably free, although they deserve a fortune for their work.
“The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.”
As was oft said of the Members of the UK Parliament during the recent expenses scandal “They just don’t get it, do they?”
This is exactly on a par with comments in the Crugate mails to the effect [annoying I can’t find it now!] “Can you imagine the fuss if we admitted that the world is cooling – it is, but it’s not statistically significant” i.e. we can’t admit to the truth because that might be used against us.
Still, while searching for the quote, I also found this…
“We’re looking at an *unprecedented* acceleration in temperature, and it’s not due to a sudden lack of volvanic eruptions. Even if it turns out to be
naturally-occurring, who’s willing to take that chance? We should be
trying to wean ourselves off of unsustainable energy generation and
use anyway. Cheers. Harry
—
Ian Harris – “Harry””
“Even if it turns out”? So much for ‘settled’ science! And the comment at the end is an interesting insight too. (Harry also seems to have a lot more confidence in the data sets when talking with others than he does in his private comments!)
Now you all know what Brown and socialism really stand for! Brave New World!!!
(with apologies to Aldous Huxley)
“In the UK there is no opposition to AGW. All the political parties subscribe to it;” – R Stevenson
Two weeks ago, you’d be correct. Two weeks ago nobody except the retired Lord Lawson even dared hint that they were slightly sceptical about AGW (and even Lawson was careful to say that he still believed in global warming and was merely quibbling about the best way to deal with it). And so far as official positions go, you’re right that nothing has changed – yet. But in the last week, several UK Conservative politicians have made publically “sceptical” statements that would have been unthinkable before Climategate. And Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband wouldn’t be rentaquoting about “climate saboteurs” and “flat-Earthers” if they didn’t think there was serious AGW opposition looming.
Met office spokesman just been on BBC news 24 saying they will not be reanalysing the data. They will be making some data available however
These guys have been studying this for years. If there was
anything to the AGW claims, it would not be necessary
to fake anything. Don’t fall into the trap. The MET office
should be ordered to forecast the weather and that’s all.
They have lost all credibility. Does anyone trust any of the
players to investigate themselves? Come on people!
Bob Tisdale (01:35:50) :
I assume this puts the HADSST3 release on hold.
Is that a prediction Bob?
You’re slipping. 😉
John Mitchell from the Met Office has just been interviewed on BBC News 24 – approx 10:15 and denied that they are re-evaluating the data but are just making it available. So how raw would this raw data be? It’s very frustrating listening to the media interviewers when they don’t put the right counter arguments but just allow the pro lobby to trot out their “the temperature measurement science is settled” statements – where is the true investigative spirit with these journalists – too busy reporting celeb trivia probably.
Fastforward to 2012:
1. The MetOrffice will have completed its reanalysis.
2. They will announce that the unprecendented warming claimed in 2009 is indeed confirmed, actually worse than they thought.
3. But in 2012, we will be in a cold period, starting a LIA, and nobody will be listening to their crap.
This is classic way of delaying the process why three years. The following has been posted at Climate Audit also.
The enquiry here is the one by CRU:
Bob Ward of the Grantham Trust. “Why don’t you wait for the enquiry you have already made up your mind”
Fraser Nelson of the Spectator “No I just read the emails”
Priceless watch here almost as good as the arsenal interview?
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5601393/what-happens-when-you-try-to-debate-climate-change.thtml
OT, but this is a great mock wikipedia article on global warming:
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Global_warming
(opening quote: “You may be looking for Scientology and not even know it!”)
The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct.
And isn’t this exactly the attitude that has been exposed by climategate? Draw your conclusions and then fit the data.
However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.
What should happen now is that some organisation is given the task of assembling raw data into one publicly accessible source. No other task. No analysis. No “adjustments” of any kind. Just a straight transcription of “B91” forms and a scan of said form. The provenance of each series should be clearly stated and the series “locked” down with a checksum. If someone later wants to “Hansen” a series this should be perfectly obvious to all when the checksums don’t match.
The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.
Government logic at it’s very best. Instead of addressing the very real problems exposed by climategate their answer is more of the same. Yes minister, more dogma, more secrecy, more children crying themselves to sleep over drowning puppies. It has done a great job of silencing the sceptics so far.
Model
3 years ? Now let me see, 3 years to write the program and 0.0005 seconds in the met offices NEW trillion £ computer,
Could anyone tell me of a layman’s reference site for writing British FOI requests,please? I looked on the Government site but couldn’t find anything (probably didn’t know where to look!). It’s regarding the BBC and maybe the UEA also.
If they publish the data as they receive it, the raw data that is, then we can have an “open source” style approach.
I’m sure there are plenty of suitably qualified people to share the workload and get it done in a few weeks.
They need to publish a list of those they have applied to for data and show the response – name and shame organisations that play silly buggers.
I’d guess we can get started already because the New Zealand data is already available.
However, can we start with a definition of “raw data”.
That doesn’t mean a spread sheet or data base, it probably means lots of scraps of reporting forms complete with coffee rings and fingerprints – amazing what transcription errors can do for the data.
It should also require compiling a full history of the surface station from which each data set has been sourced.
Then there needs to be a lot of very serious work about how the data from any station can be or should be adjusted and approved adjustments allowed only as necessary and only for legitimate reasons.
As has been said before, we need some sensible purpose designed carefully located weather stations. We need this before any adjustments can take place.
So, with a suspect station, you now surround it with ideal stations carefully located and build a data set so you can look at how the original station performs with reference to a control set and then you can decide how to treat the historical data from the station.
You also evaluate how the data from surrounding existing stations relates to the subject station and the control set to try and establish if there is any meaningful way in which historical data from existing stations can be adjusted with reference to other historical data.
Of course, we could juts let the Met go back to the we finger approach or the end result orientated adjustments.
This is all about weather station data.
Now we come to the proxy data.
This is a very tough problem and I suspect what we need is o set up a few organisations to review all the science so far and evaluate the various methods so far applied. This is going to be the tough one and it is here of all places that we need open science.
Data needs to be presented raw. Trees, for example, need identifying and supporting with a complete site profile that is part of the data set and it should include lots of other data, if tree rings are included at all.
In short, what are needed are standards and oversight and open science.
For the amount of money being spent I’d say that no climate science should be relied on that hasn’t been fully exposed on the internet where it can be reviewed by everyone. We paid for it, we are entitled to see it.
PS
I wonder if the Met hasn’t been guilty of confusing weather with climate?
Or are they just embarrassed at forecasting a bar B Q summer and everyone drowning as usual.
It would be interesting to see them repeat, once they have the new and “un-value added” data, the forecasts to see how much better or worse their forecasts would have been with clean data.
This would give us a nice appreciation for the relevance of “value added” adjustments.
If, for example, the forecast improves with raw data than with value added data then we know the added value was crap. I doubt this would work though. What we’ll probably find is that the forecasts were adjusted (sorry, value added) after being generated by the super computer and made to match the predictions and that the final forecast had not too much relationship with the data.
http://www.edparsons.com/2009/12/data-the-key-to-the-climate-change-debate/
Is this an offer from Google to host the data once it is open?
crosspatch (01:06:42) :
“Now ask yourself, what major event is slated to happen near the end of 2012 …..”
Isn’t that when The Mayans said it was all going to end?
Roy Spencer claims Climate Gate II will focus on the models, and seems a bit worried about that. Why I ask?
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
The performance of the models have been even more pathetic than the CRU science. One only has to look at the models said about hurricanes, global temps and sea level rise.
Also look how they handle clouds and sun activity.
People are doing all sorts of comparisons, but you have to keep in mind that the Hadley Centre merged two incompatible SST datasets in 1997/98 and the merger caused a rise in their HADSST2 of approximately 0.1 deg C, when compared to other SST datasets:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/12/step-change-in-hadsst-data-after-199798.html
It also exists when you compare HADSST2 and HADISST data:
http://i48.tinypic.com/2uzb3ir.png
Thanks for those offering to sign the letter to the Met Office as mentioned here
“TonyB (00:03:48) :
I live close to the Met Office in Exeter. On Monday I will be personally delivering a letter addressed to Vicky Pope….”
Any other offers for signatures?
By the way people can forget it if they think there will be any sort of objective investigation of the old temperature records
Front Page News in our local paper (covering the Met office area in Exeter) was
“10 years to save the World” with an exclusive interview by non other than Julia Slingo chief scientist at the Met office.
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/homepagenews/10-YEARS-SAVE-WORLD/article-1578308-detail/article.html
Perhaps the moderators might like to append this link to the original article heading this thread so it is a permanent recoprd of the contempt in which we ‘sceptics’ are held and the buckets of whitewash that will accompany the Met office investigation.
Tonyb
E.M.Smith (00:55:11) :
Honestly E.M! I know I said I thought you might be ‘the one’ (GIStemp Reloaded) and we do follow your gospel, but…!!!!
BTW your roadmap @(00:21:34) is excellent. Thank you. Thank you.
TonyB (00:03:48) : have you a from of words that would allow you to use IDs that are aliases? if so count me in.
Well
I guess that if the methodology is truly open, the data sources are available and the sages of this site can check what they are doing, then that is all that anyone is asking for.
If however, this is again part of a cover-up, people who’ve been caught shamelessly behaving unethically thinking that they can keep their power and influence by just spending 3 more years with a slightly different spin, then I’d say ‘don’t waste the UK’s money’.
One hopes that truly independent observers will be watching on firmly to ensure that the same old nonsense isn’t going to be peddled again…..
Ok it is News! But, & it’s a very big but, they will have time tocover up this scandallous issue by suprise suprise finding that they were right all along! The trend will be there somewhere I assure you. Maybe in good ol USA there may be confidence in impartiality, but here in the UK, there is very little. Terms of reference are everything, what will they actually look at? What will they actually review? Governments over here do this all the time, & low & behold, the Government is never found wanting for much, only minor trivia, someone will fall on their sword for the sake of completeness, then he/she will resurface somewhere high up as always, pension in tact, reputation in tact (MSM will eventiually say they just did the honorable thing but it wasn’t really their fault, etc.) Remember a government rarely admits it got it wrong, especially when it set out to decieve in the first instance, albeit for noble grounds of solving the world poverty issue. A lie, is a lie, is a lie, is a lie, & nothing but a lie! We shall see what turns up, hey?
good obama timing?
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsavnmgeur.html
click on copenhagen and look at the temperature modells up to the 18th of dec.
looks good for obama, to see copenhagen in record freezing…
I don’t blame people for being “skeptical” :), but I think this is unalloyed good news. I want to know the truth as closely as we can determine it. If they are right, cap and tax makes sense. I don’t think they are right, and my bet is that this re-analysis will show the thirties were warmer.
To me it sounds like they are going to get copies of the original historic data right from the different sources. If this is so (and it’s the only way they can guarantee transparency) the they have a big job on.
The data will be in lots of different formats, and many joins will have to be made, and I would even expect some of the data will still be in paper form. Hopefully they are planning to review the base assumption about how to ingratiate it up to a global measure, I can see why it’s going to take them at least 3 years.
This operation will live and die by how transparent it is. Everything involved in the exercise will need to be available in the public domain, so their work can be checked by independent replication. Otherwise it will be a waste of time.
I think the Met Office are just trying to protect the reputation/future of climate science, rather than trying to stage another whitewash.
“The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. ”
I wish the Met Office would not prejudge the outcome.
Will they also pressure the analysts towards their prejudiced outcome?
Or will the analysts already hold that view?
“The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.”
If the Met Office had really had a Damascene conversion, wouldn’t they admit that, even with their shiny new £30M Supercomputer being programmed by someone who was competent at his job and with Anthony Watts on one side and Steve McIntyre on the other, NOBODY could “state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012” or any other end date.
And if God drew the ‘true’ data across the sky in letters of celestial fire, it wouldn’t prove that CO2 was causing warming. And even if God remembered to put a footnote to the effect that (despite all the evidence) really it WAS CO2, it wouldn’t be good evidence that human CO2 emissions were responsible.
Before anyone gets too excited about what the Met Office may or may not do, check out this fabulous link:-
http://www.ftconferences.com/event/pdfs/63/cBrochure/0_Environmental%20Brochure%20Final.pdf?PHPSESSID=e280bb6ed50368812a076f060ec0fe07
This is the programme of a junket given by FT / Citi Private Bank:-
“We are delighted to welcome you to the 2007 FT / Citi Private Bank Environmental Awards Dinner.
“Tonight, for the first time, we will recognise businesses small and large from across the world that are leading the way in reducing their impact on climate change, by cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.
“Thanks to many recent advances in climate change science, which our special guest tonight Robert Watson will speak about later, we now know much more about the kind of adverse impacts that our reliance on fossil fuels are likely to bring about.
“There can now be no doubt that businesses, along with individuals and governments, must bear responsibility for the increase in greenhouse gas emissions that is threatening to destabilise the world’s climate, and businesses, governments and individuals must all play their part in reducing their carbon output.
“Tonight we will celebrate those businesses that have played a leading part in cutting their carbon dioxide, from small privately run businesses to multinational companies and household names. Every business can do something to cut its emissions, and doing so can bring wide-ranging benefits, not just to the climate but in energy savings, product innovation, staff motivation and customer outreach.
“We have been delighted with the response to our awards, and we hope that the example of the businesses that we highlight here tonight will help other companies to follow suit, and show that what is good for the climate can also be good for business.”
Yes, that IS Robert Watson, Chair of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Director for Strategic Development Tyndall Center, Chief Scientific Advisor to Defra. Our Bob gave the keynote speech and awarded the main prize.
And who was one of the judges and gave out the prize for Europe, Middle East & Africa? Why, none other than Robert Napier, Chairman of the Board, The Met Office!
We learn:-
“Robert Napier has been Chairman of the Board of the Met Office since October 2006.
“He retired as Chief Executive of the international conservation group WWF-UK in April 2007 after eight years in that post. Prior to WWF, Robert had a commercial career and was Chief Executive of Redland PLC from 1991 to 1997. He has served as a non-executive director of Rentokil Initial PLC and of
United Biscuits PLC and as President of the Council of Building Materials and as Chairman of the CBI Transport Policy Committee.
“Robert is currently a non-executive director of Anglian Water and of English Partnerships. He is a Trustee of the Carbon Disclosure Project; of WCMC 2000; of the South Georgia Heritage Trust; of the Baynards Zambia Trust and of the Watts Gallery. He is Chairman of the Green Fiscal Commission and of the
Governors of Sedbergh School.”
Check out the other Glitterati who were on the top table! Salivate at the menu! Imagine the Citi Bank investment advice! Picture the Profits! Imagine the Prophets!
This doesn’t say it all about Bob Napier, of course.
Check out:-
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4124
for Christopher Booker’s take on Bob & his Met Office.
So how likely is it that we will see any revelations from that quarter? And if we did and Gordon Brown saw the light and decided not to wreck what remains of the economy after all, how likely is it that his masters in Brussels would let him change tack?
No, we still have a huge mountain to climb. Remember, it isn’t the science that is driving this. And AGW is way, way, way too big to fail.
Update:
Met office spokesperson on BBC news this morning stating that the headline that they are to re-evaluate data is wrong. They do not intend to do so. Then he was given a couple of uninterrupted minutes to trash climategate. The usual only one univeristy, other “independent” sets of data exist and confirm the scientific consensus. Sea temperature rises, air temperatures at sea, melting ice caps, retreating glaciers, etc, etc. Move along, nothing to see here.
R. Stevenson 01:25:35:
There are large cracks appearing in the UK Conservative Party’s pro-AGW stance, led by David Davis and others. See today’s Telegraph, which also has a strongly sceptical article by heavyweight commentator Simon Heffer.
But now President Obama will attend the final session at Copenhagen not the opening session. That suggests they have made a deal. He would only go to the end announcement if there were something to sign!
And note that the AGW warmists language is being rathceted up. Ouor own PM Gordon “Saviour of the World” Brown is on record today (or yesterday) as saying:
“With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know what we must do. We must now act and close the 5bn-tonne gap. That will seal the deal.”
ANd then there’s our own envireonment/climate change minister, the hapless Ed Milliband saying that sceptocs are now to be classified as “climate saboteurs”. Insults is all they have left. The argument in the UK goes like this:
Q: What about the profound concerns that you should now have as a result of Climategate?
A: You are wrong, you are evil, you are stupid, you are a heretic. We know best.
Pathetic.
How is CRU able to give the data to the Met Office to analyse if CRU was not able to give it to M&M (and plenty of others who asked) because of intellectual property restrictions imposed by the various weather bureaux around the world who owned bits of the original data? And how is it that the CRU data was made available to many scientists (who then used it to prove Jones, Mann’s etc analyses were correct)? What am I missing here? Or do IP restrictions only apply to people who are ‘not one of us’?
Here’s a question; there has been a lot of work done (www.surfacestations.org) on weather stations with some alarming results.
Naturally enough it is important to standardise the instruments and the location parameters. It is also important to review the instruments periodically (and it is a crime that it took the Surface Stations volunteers to discover the dangerously negligent way in which data was gathered).
When it comes to proxy data, we are using various bore holes and trees as crude weather stations but we don’t seem to have a profile for what constitutes a suitable tree or bore hole to choose.
If they’d thought of it, I’m sure that the plants in the glass house at Kew would feature prominently in the AGW proxy data and this is probably the case with a Yamal outlier tree…. that in some way it had some pretty unique conditions (maybe people used this tree to set up camp under on regular intervals).
If such standards do exist I’d be glad to hear of them
So if I understand this right, in three years’ time we may have some data to enable (real) scientists to START investigating the pattern of global temperatures and possible causes of any fluctuations. It’s not quite what the guys at Copenhagen are basing their work on, is it?
TonyB (00:03:48)
Your LIA web page is a great resource, exactly what I needed for my project.
Thanks
I think we will see the polite and mild-mannered word “errors” used, rather than the word “fraud.”
Fraud is a crime, and focusing on “errors” is in some ways a side-track.
If we investigate fraud, it will eventually lead the howling hounds away from air-headed scientists in some lab, to treed politicians.
Watergate began with some bungling burglars, and eventually led to Nixon. The same sort of step-by-step process could occur here.
If fraud is a crime, are not some in the media guilty of being part of the crime? If media emails were looked at, over the past decade, would the emails not show an active effort to only stress Alarmism, and an active effort to repress information that cast doubt on alarmism? And does that not make them part of a fraud?
There are some who will be very glad if everyone spends the next three years going over numbers looking for “errors,” and very dismayed if everyone spends the next three years searching for the origins of a massive fraud.
If the methodology is not transparent and the data public the Met will simply be conducting a PR campaign.
they should just let it out to Steve M, Jeff ID, A Watts, et al, it will get done quicker than 3 years
E. M. Smith,
“But I could be wrong… So just tell me the SI units for this physics concept”
Watts per metre squared I believe.
I hope they do note where the mesurement points are situated so that the effect of the urban surroundings are clearly distictable. They should´t try to correct the data before hand, just use the original numbers. Then we can se where global warming is occurring, my bet is that it´s all from the mesurement stations in the heavily urbanized areas.
Here is some of this supposedly raw data from the Met office for Armagh Observatory (Northern Ireland)
http://climate.arm.ac.uk/averages.html
Where is the hockey stick?
alleagra,
“said in a speech yesterday that “People who doubt that human activity contributes to global warming are “flat-earthers” and “anti-science”.
Well, nobody doubts that people contribute to global warming – or cooling for that matter. Farming and forest clearance cause changes in the albedo, a fact that has been documented by researchers such as Roger Pielke sr. Even CO2 must cause some warming, as Lindzen recognises. So like the moron he is, Brown has taken aim – and shot at the wrong target completely.
“REPLY: you can look at the B91 forms in PDF form from the observer here:
http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html
Choose California then Weaverville RS – Anthony”
just looking at some of the older records i could probably easily drop the older temps by a few degrees and blame it on typos and not being able to read the forms. How could anyone expect there to be QC in this process with out 100% transparency.
“The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.”
Neomarxist chaps of global warming: you have three more years to re-assault CRU.
Meanwhile, pray for nature to hide the decline itself.
I smell a fix.
The whole concept of the meaning of “global temperature” and its “anomalies” will have to be rethought by future true climate scientists.
In my opinion, as far as physics is concerned, the global number has as much physical meaning as averaging the telephone catalogue, or opening a camera and talking continuous pictures on the same film. Particularly the anomaly number where anomalies over average temperatures of -60C degrees ( poles) are averaged with anomalies of over average temperatures of 30C degrees ( tropics).
The basic reason is that temperature has a thermodynamic meaning that connects it to radiated energy only if the gray body constant that goes in front of the T^4 dependence is known, and only if there is no convection or ocean currents to move swaths of energy around. This is not the situation on earth. Temperature maps have meaning in the same way that maps have a meaning : here there be tigers, here it is too cold, here it is too hot and hurricanes may happen.
So I hope that in this great effort of the UK meteorological office they will record temperatures, high and low,time of recording and geographical coordinates so as to have a data base that could be useful for some researchers in the future. Who knows, it might be that chaotic based models may reach the point where they could use the temperature input, the gray body constants and the maps, to get a climate output.
As for the present GCmodels, I have been from the beginning saying that they are completely inadequate to describe the nonlinear solutions of the innumerable fluid equations that belong to the problem. They just are fits to data ( bad data as we know) and their predictions are worth less then the bits that carry them.
In http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb
Volume: 23, Issue: 3 (30 January 2009)Page: 275-364
The review paper “Falsification of the atmosmpheric CO2 greenhouse effects within the frame of physics”
by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D.Tscheuschner goes into these matters from the point of view of physics in detail.
a pdf image copy exists in
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
It seems obvious that the Met office is simply attempting to muddy the waters and add confusion. They’ll just re-release some temperature records, carefully selected for their warming bias, and claim that CRU were right all along.
Unfortunately for them, this issue is not going away. The more they try and propagandise the science with lies, the more they will fan the flames of this conflagration. No power on earth can stop it now.
BBC Front Page News. Protests “expected” following Climategate “row” and ahead of Copenhagen. Tough new deal demanded on cutting emissions.
Odd that the first front page acknowledgment of Climategate on BBC web page is an article that discusses protests against it…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
The BBC so conspicuously a biased propaganda machine – pravda would be proud.
A note of caution. It is probable that the various collectors of past data have frequently adjusted their country’s data before passing it on to CRU, GISS etc. It can be more complex than that, because some countries have adjusted some stations many times, with various starting dates for the readjustments. So the CRU type reconstructions of the past might have been based on some early country versions, some later country versions and at times have gone further to repeat adjustments already made at home, doubling the effect.
There are some anomalous features to explain. Refer to the CRU country quarterly data on http://strata-sphere.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/idl_cruts3_2005_vs_2008b.pdf
Why is the year 1998 so hot in some places and not in others? Why is there a deep cold year about 1975 in about half of the reporting countries – see Costa Rica for a good example? Why do the graphs of some countries look almost identical to others, e.g. Turmenistan versus Uzbekistan – or Syria vs. Jordan? Of course some are neighbours, but then look at other pairs of neighbours and you see much bigger differences.
Sorry to suggest, but the whole exercise will need going right back to individual metadata sheets for each station, for each country, then starting with a clean sheet and doing only adjustments that can be supported by a neutral panel as “justified.”
If you wish to work with some problem examples, see the Australian summary at Niche Modeling blog of David Stockwell http://landshape.org/enm/australian-temperature-adjustments-ii/, and try plotting some of the data from the files
ftp://ftp2.bom.gov.au/anon/home/bmrc/perm/climate/temperature
Within the last URL there is a section named 08/02/1999 12:00AM 26,328 alladj.utx.Z (This is one higher directory level up from the page that opens, under “annual”).
Annual step changes range from +7deg C at one station to -5.5 deg C at a couple of others. I do not know how much further adjustment has happened after these files were made.
It has become surreal. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. (Carroll, Throught the Looking Glass, 1872, ch 5).
E.M. Smith:
…
“4) Have a professional computer programmer do the programming, preferably with a professional computer project manager involved.”
You called? 🙂
“5) Do it in a relational database product, please. Flat files is so 1970…”
I have to respectfully disagree here (in a kind of vi vs. emacs kind of way ;-)… For the actual data, flat files with proper metadata are human-readable, fast, simple, transportable, checkable, source-controllable and easily mungeable in any language. Stick it all in SQL and you slow everything down, have to trust the DBA not to mess anything up, and you lose the universal access and transparency.
I’m not against SQL per se (great for customer, transaction, product data etc – I’m writing one now), it’s just not great for something very open and accessible.
Juraj. V: “Comparing HadCRUT with UAH/RSS shows, that during the last 30 years HadCRUT risen by 0.1- 0.2 deg C more than those two”.
Sorry, I see no evidence for this, at least with RSS:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/mean:12/plot/rss/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/trend/plot/rss/trend
You can’t conflate UAH and RSS here because there is a marked trend difference between them – something that has nothing to do with HADCRUT3:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:12/plot/rss/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/trend
Many people seem to be taking this (possible?) Met. Office announcement as an admission that HADCRUT3 is fatally flawed. I don’t think you can assume that, it was just a (rather naive, and almost certainly counterproductive) attempt at recovering some high ground in the war of words going on in the UK media.
In general, I still can’t see the case for casting doubt on HADCRUT3, not only because it matches so well with other series, but because nothing in the “files” indicates anything bad having been done to it.
Sure, “Harry” had his share of pain trying to sort out the data – which is why it should be looked at in the open – but there is no “smoking gun” for HADCRUT3 there; all the e-mails and code that everyone is making noise about is to do with the tree-ring proxy reconstructions – and any debate about the validity of that there goes much deeper than a few lines of IDL.
My word, I can’t quite believe how immensely insulting the AGW lobby [and our own PM/Environment Sec] have been in the last 24hrs.
So far they’ve compared my views to those of swivel-eyed cranks, Hitler-sympathisers, criminals, pro-fox hunting/seal clubbers.
I think the expression ‘losing the plot’ is the underestimate of the century so far. Hyperbole clearly gets to 11 on their amp.
Oh and of course someone who thinks the same thing as ‘an arsehole’. Sophiscated debating techniques or what.
They do say that insulting voters is a bad idea, well it’s certainy a novelty to be name-called like this. [snip]are they thinking of?
Congratulations to the Met Office for washing their hands of political interference. They have just told the politicians that they are not going to Copenhagen.
I read the Met statement in terms of an internal war being fought at bureaucratic political and scientific levels. Their initial Nov 24th release was a typical CYA corporate memo designed to give the lawyers time to come up with excuses. As this time goes by, however, the CRU mess starts to spiral out of control. Politicians like Gordon Brown are furious at the scientists for not being more supportive of the party line, while more than a few scientists whom have bit their tongues over the politicization of their profession are starting to make staff meetings more than interesting. The new “consensus” shows the Met will provide no political cover for the foreseeable future. The debate is not over, but the way we were told it was, is.
1. Since 2007,the BBC has declared that human climate change is settled and sceptics need not be given equal airtime.IT DOESN’T give this caveat before or during news reports on the subject! How can there be ‘openess’ when the major opinion former is still biased! 2 The Government = The Met Office.
“The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data”
Will that temperature be raw data, or adjusted raw data
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/uh-oh-raw-data-in-new-zealand-tells-a-different-story-than-the-official-one/
Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU’s Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were “destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data
Mac said: “just looking at some of the older records i could probably easily drop the older temps by a few degrees and blame it on typos and not being able to read the forms. How could anyone expect there to be QC in this process with out 100% transparency.
Perhaps something like reCAPTCHA could rapidly get records re-digitised while retaining a decent level of quality control.
More garbage from the Telegraph .I must stop reading that newspaper until the editors get to grips with the tripe written by Lean and Gray. [sounds like a description of a race horse 🙂 ] this item is preposterous
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6729732/Copenhagen-climate-summit-gloomy-Swede-Svante-Arrhenius-saw-chill-wind-of-change.html
Michael (20:53:32) :
“Those on the inside are reading unreleased e-mails. Me thinks they came across some more seriously damaging crap they are not telling us about. Maybe they alerted BO about this and that being the reason for the delay to Cophenhagen.”
I think ongoing review of backup servers/archives at CRU, PSU, GISS and NASA (and other places) are revealing emails were deleted, recovered those and found, as you say, unrelesed emails. They likely are seeing a much worse picture than we are here at WUWT.
When do we get to see it too? Push, Push.
John
I imagine the Met Office have announced this ‘re-examination’ of 160 years of temperature data because Climategate had begun to cause them huge problems with their commercial interests.
Part of the corrupting factor behind the global warming scam is that the Met Office has moved into selling ‘climate change product’ to international banks, insurers, health providers and government agencies.
The Met Office’s product would be valueless in the marketplace unless the organisation ALSO promoted the idea that ‘man-made climate change’ (ie, AGW) is real. And in order to do this, it must move away from its core purpose of making objective recordings of temperature, towards finding and placing a *meaning* on those recordings – a meaning that has a commercial value.
Once the authenticity of this meaning is convincingly challenged – by an external expert analysis of the data, or by a whistleblower showing the lengths the Met Office and its accomplices have gone to arrive at the meaning – then the organisation’s existing customers will believe they have been cheated – and a huge market of potential customers will evaporate.
The Met Office has already become a laughing-stock with its wildly inaccurate seasonal projections (often turning out to be exactly opposite to the real weather conditions) – the corruption exposed in the Climategate emails (and code) now shows the Met Office’s customer base that the organisation is little better than a used car salesman.
The purpose of ‘re-examining’ its temperature records is to reinforce the predetermined ‘meaning’ it has placed on them and thereby attempt to rescue its disastrous foray into the commercial world. A disaster not only for the Met Office – but also for the people of Great Britain who have been cheated out of a reliable national weather-forecasting service by the corruption of greed for money and political power.
tallbloke (01:57:41) :
LOL – very good!
So if I understand this right, in three years’ time we may have some data to enable (real) scientists to START investigating the pattern of global temperatures and possible causes of any fluctuations. It’s not quite what the guys at Copenhagen are basing their work on, is it
No Bob 🙂 read the announcement. They are going to find how much global warming there is.
Two words for CRU:
OPEN SOURCE
Meanwhile, today is the 255th of 2009 with no sunspots, 766th since 2004.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Just thinking back to the emails – IIRC they all appeared to be harvested from Phil Jones mail account.
If there was a thorough search under the FOI request, surely they’d be stuff from Ian Harris and others too. Is the leaker wanting to focus attention just on those who appear to have orchestrated this [protecting the little guys] or is there more to come?
I’m assuming that the software experts at UEA will know what files were copied if it was an inside job?
Foxes do not check henhouses.
Independent audit.
BBC Newsnight – ‘Asshole’ edition. Interesting viewing:
http://www.the-daily-politics.com/2009/12/climategate-newsnight-4th-dec-2009.html
Watson (assisted by the BBC interviewer) Vs Morano
IMHO there were two assholes on that program and neither were American!
E.M.Smith (00:55:11) :
> Bohemond (20:33:33) : Of course, that means that the warmmongers will have GISS as their only principal dataset. Now if we can shine some sunlight into that roach-nest….
> And The Smith said: “Let there be light!” :
> http://chiefio.wordpress.com/gistemp/
Thank you for all your work – I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help.
Richard B,
The BBC is reporting that the story is true, that they are writing to 180 countries for permission to release the raw data. Nothing about re-evaluating the data though. Once they release it, it will be re-evaluated, no matter what.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8396696.stm
Perhaps the three years will give some of us in countries other than the US to do an assessment of the weather stations involved along the lines of the surface stations project you are in the middle of in the US. Imagine a distributed effort around the globe! It would enable the raw data to be used properly and give a much better idea of its true utility.
Vincent (04:16:01) :
> E. M. Smith,
>> “But I could be wrong… So just tell me the SI units for this physics concept”
> Watts per metre squared I believe.
That was a joke, referring as much to the concept as the bogus values the AGW community have used.
The units are dependent on how the forcing/feedbacks are applied. A good retort would have been that the concept is dimensionless, sort of like pi or e and the value is just a coefficient (or function) in some partial differential equation.
Thank you for costing the uk probably £500,000 +
But not only that, looking at the rabid comments above (“if it doesn’t say what I want it to say then I will not believe it”), the investigation will be worthless!
Martin Brumby (03:39:38) :
“No, we still have a huge mountain to climb. Remember, it isn’t the science that is driving this. And AGW is way, way, way too big to fail.”
I think it has already failed. Just give it 6 months for the politicians to save face and a new bunch of scientist to be lined up to work on the next ploy.
Always remember, the bigger they are the harder they fall :-))
Hey Bill… you don’t seem to mind spending BILLIONS on science based in crummy data.
He [Gordon Brown] said: “With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn’t be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics. We know the science. We know what we must do.”
Well there you have it. Emperors new clothes anyone?
Still not clear on what exactly the MO is proposing to examine or release. The issue is the HadCRUT data, is this what they intend to release? All of it?
Judging from the news coverage here this is all seen as a bit of a formality. The MO release “some” data in order to “prove” Global Warming and we all just shut up and get with the program. It looks like those expecting some kind of new era of transparent science will have to wait.
Was surprised to find a story like this one – it’s happening way faster than expected. Welcome to the reality of the great carbon scam. Conveniently forgotten as the thieves assemble in Denmark to divide up the swag. Perhaps the WHO could investigate some real and measurable “climate” deaths for a change. Won’t hold my breath though.
E.M.Smith (00:21:34) :
What you describe is good business practice; unfortunately government agencies don’t seem to like good practice. Re your point 8: in the UK there are salt mines where any and everything can be stored for a nominal price.
bill (05:47:22) :
To whom are you addressing that?
The people who expect studies that are used by international planning organizations to be accurate, or the people who’ve been paid to assemble and analyze the data and screwed it up so badly that it has to be redone?
Why would the analysis of the data take three years?
What is there to analyze?
Either the MET has the data they have complied, or they don’t.
Just release what they have right now.
It might, however, take three years for them to fudge it all.
Editor of the right-wing Spectator takes on geezer from lefty London School of Economics. Watch him become ‘hysterical’:
Fraser Nelson takes on Bob Ward.
What about this?
From: John Daly
To: n.nicholls@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: Climatic warming in Tasmania
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 1996 20:04:00 +1100
Cc: Ed Cook , NNU-NB@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Mike Barbetti , zetterberg@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rjf@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Dear Neville,
You mentioned to me some time ago that in your view, the 11-year solar cycle
did not influence temperature. There have been numerous attempts by
academics to establish a correlation, but each has been shot down on some
ground or other. I remember Barrie Pittock was especially dismissive of
attempts to correlate solar cycle with temperature.
Have you tried this approach?
Load “Mathematica” into your PC and run the following set of instructions –
data = ReadList[ “c:sydney.txt”, Number]
dataElements = Length[data]
X = ListPlot[ data, PlotJoined-> True];
fourierTrans = Fourier[data];
ListPlot[Abs[fourierTrans], PlotJoined -> True];
fitfun1 = Fit[data,{1,x,x^2,x^3,Sin[11 2 Pi x/dataElements],
Cos[11 2 Pi x/dataElements]},x];
fittable = Table[N[fitfun1], {x, dataElements}];
Y = ListPlot[fittable, PlotJoined -> True];
Show[X, Y]
The reference to “c:sydney.txt” is a suggested pathname for the following
set of data – which is Sydney’s annual mean temperature.
16.8 16.5 16.8 17 17 16.7 17.1 17.4 17.9 17.4 17.2 17.1 16.9 17 17.2 17.2 17.4
17.6 17.6 17.6 16.7 17.1 16.8 17.4 16.8 17.3 17.8 17.5 17.1 17.2 17.6 17.3 17.1
16.9 16.9 17.3 17.3 17.3 17.6 17.5 17.4 17.2 17.1 17.3 17.2 17.2 16.9 17.5 17.4
17.2 17 17.5 17.4 17.5 17.7 18.3 17.8 17.4 17.2 17.4 18.3 17.3 18 18.1 18 17.5
17.3 18 17 18.2 17.4 17.6 17.5 17.4 17.1 17.4 17.3 17.5 17.7 18 17.8 18 17.4
17.8 16.8 17.5 17.4 17.6 17.6 17.2 17.4 17.9 17.9 17.6 17.7 17.8 17.7 17.6 17.8
18.3 18 17.6 17.8 17.8 17.8 18.1 17.9 17.5 17.8 18.3 18 17.7 17.3 17.5 18.5 17.4
17.8 17.7 17.8 17.7 18 18.5 18.2 17.8 18.1 17.5 17.8 17.8 18 18.6 18.1 18.1
18.6
So Far so good.
“Mathematica” first plots out the data itself (see Atachment 1)
The first part of the instruction set lets “mathematica” do a Fourier Transform
on the data, ie. searching out the periodicities, if there are any. The result is
shown on Attachment 2.
The transform result shows a sharp spike at the 11 year point (I wonder
what is significant about 11 years?). The second part of the instructions
now acts upon this observed spike (the Cos 11 bit), to extract it’s
waveform from the rest of the noise. The result is shown as a waveform
in attachment 3, the waves having an 11-year period, with the long-term
Sydney warming easily evident.
Attachment 4 shows the original Sydney data overlaid against the 11-year
periodicity.
It would appear that the solar cycle does indeed affect temperature.
[b](I tried the same run on the CRU global temperature set. Even though [u]CRU
must be highly smoothed[/u] by the time all the averages are worked out, the
11-year pulse is still there, [u]albeit about half the size of Sydneys).[/u/[/b]
Stay cool.
John Daly
The 5 stages of grief: 1) Denial, 2) Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Depression and 5) Acceptance.
I suspect the UK Met is at stage 3: “Just give me three more years…..”
An excellent column on climate change by George Will in the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120403073.html
Most of the sceptics debating on televised media have not done so convincingly. They have to focus on the following facts:
1. CRU refused to release the data, they were hiding it. thus
2. CRU continuously violated FOIA laws. We have a right to see it.
3. CRU deleteed and destryoed data
4. CRU manipulated the data to enhance the warming trend.
5. Solid evidence of criminal activity.
Period
That’s all. Why can’t sceptics drive that across? What bozos!
Gordon Brown is a twit. It’s ignorant politicians that should be against the law, not oil.
One of the best ClimateGate articles so far is a long one in the 20091214 Weekly Standard (cover page of that issue is priceless):
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/300ubchn.asp
Titled ”Scientists Behaving Badly” (no kidding), the closing statement in that piece about the AGW religion is a keeper:
”But even before Climategate, the campaign was beginning to resemble a Broadway musical that had run too long, with sagging box office and declining enthusiasm from a dwindling audience. Someone needs to break the bad news to the players that it’s closing time for the climate horror show.”
Turn out the lights, the party’s over for AGW. . . . At least if there is any reservoir of common sense left in the world, it should be.
Why don’t they just release the raw data. We can use Amazon EC2 to host a temporary compute cloud (only .10 dollar per hour per cpu) and use open code to crunch it however climatologists want and see what kind of graphs we get.
I think the folks at UK Met are quite smart. 3 years is about the time it will take to realize whether we are entering a new cooling period (due to the sun’s lack of sunspots) or another warming phase related to natural weather variability. if it warms, they will say the data was correct all along and climate change theory was always right. If it cools, they can “discover” that the data was wrong, blame it on some designated scapegoats and save the institution’s reputation by claiming the some rogue scientists acted on their own.
Just a theory.
bill (05:47:22),
“Thank you for costing the uk probably £500,000 +”
Are you actually unaware that this catastrophic AGW scare is part and parcel of a coordinated attempt to impose enormous new taxes on the citizens of the West, and to funnel those monies through the opaque and unaccountable UN?
Can’t you see the constant drumbeat of alarmism throughout the lock-step media and the pronouncements of government entities, which stand to gain by deliberately scaring the populace with their tall tales of cities sunk under an encroaching ocean, of disappearing polar ice cover, of dying polar bears, of the seas turning to acid, of increased hurricanes and other weather disasters?
All of these scenarios are bogus. Every one of them have been debunked. Can’t you see that it is all part of a fabricated scare story, designed to give impetus to the creation of treaties leading to a world government? A world government that gives an equal vote to each of the UN General Assembly’s 130+ countries. How do you think the majority of the UN’s countries will vote, when the question concerns how the world’s wealth must be redistributed? Compare your half-million pound expense with the $Trillions already proposed to save us from this fake climate scare. And compare your £0.5 million CRU expense with the £13.7 million that has already been funneled to Phil Jones alone, by entities with a heavy AGW agenda. And similar largess has been spread around to other scientists promoting the AGW scare.
There is nothing unusual going on with the climate. Nothing. The current climate is very benign compared with the geologic past. And now that the behind-the-scenes machinations of the secretive CRU and Penn State scientists have been exposed to the light of day, we can see why their clique is filled with hatred directed at anyone who dares to question their invented conclusions based on cherry-picked data.
Their position has been extremely lucrative for them, and their enhanced status sends them all over the world on expense paid first class trips to sell their alarming story. Their hatred, expressed in the emails of anyone questioning their conclusions, is because those questions are a threat to their rock star-like life style; they were once nerds, now they are heroes saving humanity. But they know it is all based on a lie.
The suppressed data challenges these scientists’ false claim that a change in a tiny and entirely beneficial trace gas, essential to all life on Earth, will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. They have subverted the public’s trust in science to sell their provably false story: as the trace of atmospheric CO2 has risen over the past decade, the planet’s temperature has declined. Over 95% of the increase in CO2 comes from natural sources, not from human activity. Yet they imply, through selective release of data, that human activity is responsible for 100% of the increase.
The leaked emails that we have seen are just the tip of the iceberg. Rather than wail about the expense of fixing the CRU’s deliberately corrupted data set, you should be cheering about the fact that this organized climate scam has been exposed. Now it will be a little more difficult for the “democratic” UN countries to vote to equalize the world’s wealth at our expense, based on the CO2 = Catastrophic AGW fraud.
Re the Met Office and their commercial situation – the government has been talking of selling them off for years [and touted again only about 8 weeks ago] – no one is going to touch them with a barge pole with this hanging over it.
And yes, all those organisations that have a trading relationship with them will be back-pedalling too.
Success has many fathers, whilst failure is an orphan.
Same applies to UEA – if I had them as a partner/supplier, I’d be talking to my lawyers about unwinding.
They only have their reputation to trade on and that has gone up the creek in a global way. Who’s going to view a relationship with them as ‘a good PR move’ now?
I feel desperately sorry for their students.
“The Met Office’s published data showing a warming trend draws heavily on CRU analysis.” “The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct.”
3 more years of funding and “proving” they are right, praying El Nino comes back strong.
These are sick people, arrogant, and twisted.
Let Steve McIntyre do the audit.
P Gosselin (06:30:23) :
“That’s all. Why can’t sceptics drive that across? What bozos!”
I think they are far too close to it – they’re down in the weeds rather than talking about the big scandal and what it means.
I’ve just been listening to Any Answers [phone in response to panel discussion Any Questions] on BBC Radio 4.
The callers were 50/50 – ‘if they’re so confident of their data, why do they use the language/tactics they did?’, ‘I haven’t read the emails – I’m a scientist and the deniers are wrong’ and ‘the IPCC are the experts – look at all those peer-reviewed papers’.
The R4 audience is typically intelligent, interested in high quality facts/debate and likes to think of themselves as well informed.
Ya know…
It strikes me (that was the gong sound you just heard) that this reexamination might just work if something like the following were undertaken at the same time…
With poorly sited or badly maintained equipment, find a place as close as possible to the present location that meets standards, and place new equipment there. Compare the two results over a year’s time – that ought to give at least a ballpark idea of an “adjustment” that might stand the light of day.
In the case of UHI, siting in several places outside the Urban area and averaging them to the existing sites could be used.
I’m especially thinking of the Tucson site at the UofA atmospherics department. I know of several areas near there that meet requirements…and I don’t even live in Tucson.
Yeah, probably missing some fine points here but it’s a start…and would be pretty cost effective too…(and bring many sites to specs.
Mike
If no sites are within say a half-mile or mile then several
Huge thread to wake up to this am! Lots of thoughts roiling through my head in response to numerous postings.
First, this one. If the reanalysis is truly “open,” it doesn’t matter who does it, and this can only be a good thing.
Second, for all of those concerned about all the “adjustments” that have to be made in doing this leaving open the door for doubts about the final product, it seems to me that it should be possible to impose some controls by making the adjustments “fit” the satellite data, and work backwards using the same adjustments in the past. A lot of concern is that the agencies (CRU, GISS) have made adjustments that cool the past, and warm the present. Well, make the adjustments just for the last 30 years, and then stick with them consistently for older data.
As for adjustments, why are we adjusting for UHI in the first place? That should not be done to the baseline temperature record. Establish what temperatures have been, regardless of source. Then try to to explain them. At that point, UHI becomes relevant. That takes UHI out of hands of the data collectors, and makes it a separate research issue. That way, we don’t have to listen to “UHI is already accounted for.” Instead, it becomes something for the specialists to argue about in the literature. Of course, to do it, the data will have to be open, and available, so anyone can have at it, and see if they can quantify UHI.
It might be interesting to have a dialog about what “adjustments” are really appropriate to establish the baseline temperature record. Shooting from the hip, these come immediately to mind:
Missing data
Station moves
Equipment changes
Uneven record length (would include station dropout)
Handling of geographic placement (includes infilling for areas with spotty or no coverage)
Handling of “averaging” and uncertainty
More?
I ran these on Audit Commanders Benford’s Law test. First and last digit fail. Makes you wonder.
November 2009 UAH Global Temperature Update +0.50 deg. C
December 2nd, 2009
YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 +0.304 +0.443 +0.165 -0.036
2009 2 +0.347 +0.678 +0.016 +0.051
2009 3 +0.206 +0.310 +0.103 -0.149
2009 4 +0.090 +0.124 +0.056 -0.014
2009 5 +0.045 +0.046 +0.044 -0.166
2009 6 +0.003 +0.031 -0.025 -0.003
2009 7 +0.411 +0.212 +0.610 +0.427
2009 8 +0.229 +0.282 +0.177 +0.456
2009 9 +0.422 +0.549 +0.294 +0.511
2009 10 +0.286 +0.274 +0.297 +0.326
2009 11 +0.496 +0.418 +0.575 +0.493
MET office intends to realise all data next week.
Here is the seasonal temperature deviation for Central England, 10 year moving average 1650-2010 with the first & last 10 year redacted.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CET.gif
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (04:55:20)
In general, I still can’t see the case for casting doubt on HADCRUT3, not only because it matches so well with other series, but because nothing in the “files” indicates anything bad having been done to it.
Hi Paul, good to see you post on this thread. In one of the VRU emails, Phil Jones says both HADcrut and GISS are based on the same data, but that GISS is inferior because of add hoc UHI adjustments.
Given the awful state of both CRU and GISS code, why would we have confidence in either? The fact tht they both broadly agree could be down to behind the scenes recognition of the value of mutual support and commonality of purpose rather than sound methodology and genuinely reinforcing independent results could it not?
From the link above:
Wrong city, wrong country. The Nobel Peace prize was never awarded in Sweden. It is awarded every year in Oslo, Norway on December 10.
The weather forecast for Oslo December 10. is 2C and rain. But it is marked “uncertain”, and the following days will be much colder. With some luck, the cold arrives earlier.
I believe this is an attempt to quell the resistance to the Copenhagen Treaty which is the means to finance a new unelected global government & give tyrants the power to control every aspect of our lives.
If they can sign a deal at Copenhagen, we will have no political recourse to reverse what will be a fascist global regime.
They plan to introduce Codex Alimentarius at the end of the year which will mean the prohibition of vitamins & supplements & global control of the food chain by the same people who brought you CLIMATEGATE & SWINE FLU.
It’s Orwellian how these people have redefined things we need to live as TOXINS!
By their own calculations this will mean the death of millions of people worldwide & in my opinion this is the unseen agenda, the missing step in reason, that people have mentioned.
New World Order. Global Fascist Government. An orchestrated collapse of western industrial society & food shortages, the aim being massive population reduction.
This is why Obama has decided to attend Copenhagen.
And those in control of the UN will try to drive this through because without it, it all stops.
This is much bigger than some vain & greedy scientists.
The big lie of AGW could not have been maintained without the support of very powerful corporate & financial interests.
How else could the obedience of the media & politicians that we have witnessed have been enforced?
Does anyone believe they are all rallying to support the reputations of Phil & Mike?
This is why we must rise up & refuse to accept this coup d’etat.
Furthermore, the UN must be dismantled & those responsible be investigated & brought to justice.
Similarly, those who have conspired in our national governments need to be held accountable for their actions.
The people need to stop waiting for ‘authority’ to make it better.
Authority didn’t question this bogus science or expose the criminal manipulation of data, YOU DID!
The pyramidal power structure has shown itself to work actively against truth & justice & the needs & interests of the people.
We need to learn that lesson NOW & remove the means by which power corrupts our planet.
The way people have united over this to reveal the truth has inspired me & I sincerely thank all of you who have worked so hard & long, despite the personal attacks & worse you have endured.
People, we need to have faith in ourselves & wake up to how we have been so manipulated & deceived by those we trusted.
STOP COPENHAGEN.
STOP CODEX ALIMENTARIUS.
MASS PEACEFUL PROTEST.
MASS NON PAYMENT OF TAXES.
MASS CONSUMER, BANK & WORK BOYCOTTS.
& lets show those responsible for these crimes against humanity the real meaning of NEW WORLD ORDER.
:o)
Martin Brumby (03:39:38) :
Before anyone gets too excited about what the Met Office may or may not do, check out this fabulous link:-
http://www.ftconferences.com/event/pdfs/63/cBrochure/0_Environmental%20Brochure%20Final.pdf?PHPSESSID=e280bb6ed503688
From the link:
Wines
Organic Pinot Blanc Jean Baltenweck Ribeauille, Alsace, France 2005
Organic Casa de la Ermita Crianza, Spain 2004
Where possible, all ingredients have been sourced within the UK
But, but, surely they could have had English wine, with it being so hot and all?
Isn’t this a bit like letting Enron do their own audit to show the extent of their profitability trend?
And I like their goal of being able to “state with absolute confidence”. That is a theological goal, not a scientific goal.
Gordon ‘climate-change sceptics are flat-earthers’ Brown has made such a success of the British economy that the Treasury is looking for government assets to sell, including the Met Office (VT Group ‘would buy Met Office’ http://www.defencemanagement.com/news_story.asp?id=11332 ). The CRU debacle will not have enhanced the Met Office’s standing and I expect they are trying to distance themselves from the mess.
“How do they know that they analysis will take three years? Why not two? Why not four?”
Because the world will have ended by then, and the whole question will be moot.
Seriously, a barrage of e-mail to MPs, Congresspersons, etc. pointing out that since such horrors as Cap’n Trade (my new nickname for Al Gore) rest on the ‘settled science’ hawked by the IPCC report, and since radical unsettling has taken place, such political exercises should be put on hold pending a review of the data
From E.M. Smith:
10) Stop re-writing the past for UHI. It’s a hack, and a bad one at that.
11) Don’t use a ‘one size fits all’ UHI. For example, for each site that is an airport, have a flag for ‘first airport use’ and for ‘last airport use’ and for each year in between have a ’size’ parameter. The airport heat island effect is different at a grass field in 1920 than it is at London Gatwick. For cities, having a single population number is bogus. Take the old census records and put in a population by year table. Right now there is one size for Chicago, what it is now. That is not accurate for 1880…
12) Pay attention to micro climate drivers, such as altitude, distance to the sea, latitude, etc. when using ‘reference stations’ for fill in. Don’t do silly things like adjust Pisa the wrong way by looking at the Alps. When doing UHI, have a simple sanity check to prevent adjusting UHI the wrong way. (GIStemp does this in a significant fraction of the records… 1/4? )
I just asked about this in a previous post. Shouldn’t we develop a baseline methodology using the “raw” data first without any adjustments for UHI? It seems to me that all the questions regarding the quantification and adjusting for UHI make this a research issue to be hashed out separate from developing a baseline temperature record. No matter how “they” do it, it could probably be done differently, and we need to know that, and what difference it makes. But once “they” do it, and it becomes part of the published temperature data set, it takes UHI off the table as it were (“it has already been accounted for). UHI and land use/land cover changes are huge issues here. We need a good, open, source of “raw” (maybe adjusted for missing data, equipment changes, etc.) that is not already adjusted for the controversial issues. Once that is available, let ‘er rip, i.e. let everybody go after trying to quantify the impact of these on the “raw” data.
“The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change admitted yesterday that it needed to consider the full implications of the e-mails and whether they cast doubt on any of the evidence for man-made global warming.”
That might be the best under statement of all time.
“Any” evidence to make one think about “doubt”.
Anyone with more than two functioning synaptic junctions could figure that one out.
So much for the IPCC objectivity.
ben corde (02:09:55) :
Now you all know what Brown and socialism really stand for! Brave New World!!!
If only! I’ve seen too much evidence of a “Cowardly New World.” However, it only takes a brave few to route thousands.
” How could one chase a thousand,
And two put ten thousand to flight,
Unless their Rock had sold them,
And the LORD had given them up? Deuteronomy 32:30
” One of your men puts to flight a thousand,
for the LORD your God is He who fights for you,
just as He promised you. Joshua 23:10
3×2,
The cold weather data is actually counter to the warmist alarmism.
The IPCC made a point that warmer summer weather will kill so many thousands a year but failed to mention how many would be killed by cold weather.
Warmer summers might kill more people in the summer but a warmer winter will kill fewer people.
What this article does is focus us on the fact that all things are not equal.
Rising fuel prices (part of the measures taken and to be taken more vigorously as part of the green agenda) will cause a further increase in cold weather deaths as people forgo heating they cannot afford so we have an amplifying effect.
From a warmist perspective, they’d certainly like to play down the effects of cold weather and even more certainly the impact of fuel carbon taxes on the death rate.
So it is interesting that the article is most noteworthy for saying absolutely nothing about global warming or climate change, phrases normally dropped into virtually every comment on anything to do with the weather. They don’t even have the words climate or warming independently used, words that might normally find their way into an article such as “in the current economic climate” i.e. the depression.
They don’t even attempt to explain why fuel prices rose 40% as that might have to include some references to climate change measures. Windmill subsidies?
Why is that?
Well, I’d guess its so that the search engines won’t find it with any of the usual search terms. If it isn’t deliberate, I’d be some what surprised but then, I’m becoming very suspicious that people are waking up to the dangers of the internet which is the only reason why we are even having these discussions. If we relied on the mainstream media we’d be ignorant as newborn babes.
I wonder how common that trick is?
Any other examples I wonder?
Mods: At the very least * a language clean-up is needed in the 4th paragraph of the post by reLOVEution (07:20:05) above …
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* There is more that needs to be addressed in that post, but I’m not going to spend the time …
[Objectionable word deleted. ~dbs, mod.]
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Why not just release the raw data, and between us all we could get an answer in six weeks.
Oh, and cost 1% as much as the Met Office will charge. Oh, sorry, that’s why they will not propose this.
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What the met office should do is create a raw data set without any correction for UHI, type of sensor, movement of the site, etc. The data should include type of sensor, location/height of sensor, date of observation and value. That’s it. Once they have that, the data should be made available to anyone and everyone who wants to attempt making sense of it. Rottsa ruck. The raw data is a mess, but as long as we have 30 or 40 unique attempts to correct it, we should at least get some idea of the error range. That’s better than one “trust me.”
anna v (04:43:37) :
The whole concept of the meaning of “global temperature” and its “anomalies” will have to be rethought by future true climate scientists.
Anna and others,
This whole global temperature controversy has amazed me that what seems so simple to measure should be so controversial. But here is my question:
Why not:
1) Position a dozen or so satellites in geosync orbit and measure reflected energy from earth.
2) Place one satellite in sun synchronous orbit and measure incident energy.
3) For good measure, measure energy reflected from the Moon.
4) Subtract 1) from 2) plus 3)
If 4) is negative we must eventually cool; if positive we must eventually warm.
>>We’ll take care of him, but how are we going to
>>deprogram all the kids?
Yes, that is a real problem. Take a look at this horrendous UK advert for global warming, that plays on every childish heartstring there is. It is utterly disgusting – worse than anything Goebbels could have dreamed of.
If you want to complain about this advert, fill in this form.
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/how_to_complain/
.
We’ll take care of him, but how are we going to deprogram
all the kids?
Abolish the government school system and also allow true liberty in hiring and firing in business. The free market will do the rest. There is no perfect solution as far as outcome is concerned but there are optimum approaches to MAXIMIZE good.
There is no need to force good ideas on people and bad ideas should not be forced on people. What need then for our huge present government?
Another New Zealand???????????????
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Alaska_Climate.pdf
ClimateGate was the nail in the coffin.
The coffin is now officially buried for 3 years.
E.M.Smith (00:55:11) :
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/gistemp/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/ncdc-ghcn-issues/
And it was very good. 😉
Very very very very good…. and very very very very amazing…
@ Icebergs Everywhere! (02:43:29) :
Could anyone tell me of a layman’s reference site for writing British FOI requests,please?
Here
http://www.foi.gov.ie/how-do-i-make-an-foi-request
Tallbloke (07:15) (Hi Rog.)
I think the question whether HADCRUT3 and GISTEMP could be affected by the same problems is a good one, but my understanding is that they take the same set of raw data (e.g. GHCN) and process it in quite different ways. I guess you could assert they somehow agreed to make sure that it all aligns at the end, but that’s stretching my Occam filter a bit too far, personally.
But this train of thought really leaves the tracks when it comes to RSS and UAH, I think. This is completely separate data source (AMSU satellite) processed in two different ways. We know that UAH and RSS diverge between themselves, and let’s leave that for them to argue about, but the fact remains that RSS at least tracks almost perfectly with HADCRUT3 and GISTEMP.
Now, obviously at some point the satellite data must have been calibrated to known surface temperatures, and I admit I don’t know how that was done, but presumably it was done back in 1979. For these series (at least for RSS) to follow exactly the same trend as HADCRUT3 thereafter indicates to me that they are all collectively basically on the money, plus or minus some noise.
We still need the data, software, and documents from CRU so we can study what was done.
For the life of me I can’t figure out why it was so easy to sell the idea that “climate” is so one dimensional that we can measure, and forecast it, using only temperatures.
Even short range (1-72 hours) forecasts require more than temperatures to make with any degree of accuracy. Public safety is paramount in forecasting trips to and from widely scattered airfields around the world using temperature records badly contaminated with UHI — but is being done quite well, for the most part, all over the planet.
Lets face it – a weather observation is just a slice of ‘climate’ at a particular time, but it requires far more information than temperature to be useful for making these vitally accurate predictions. Unfortunately, that ‘slice’ can change very rapidly.
Just imagine a pilot being briefed for a trans-pacific fight and being told that the expected average temperature at your flight level will be -45, “Have a good flight!”
Is it possible that Obama is delaying his appearance at Copenhagen to gain a little time to divine which way the political winds are blowing? The way the Climategate scandal is snowballing, the picture may look quite different in a week. I think the ETS failing the the Australian senate was a wake up call to the politicians. As I understand it, the Liberals took a very risky bet that there was more AGW skepticism than was apparent, or at least there would be by the time an early election came up and there was more time to disseminate the climategate story. The AGW crowd might control the main stream media, but that is irrelevant in the internet age. They are just now getting the message. The Democrats’ loss of the governors races in Virginia and New Jersey also demonstrate that they do not have enduring support to enact their agenda and are very vulnerable in the 2010 elections. This is so different from last fall, when everyone thought the Republicans were left for dead for decades after the Obama sweep. Even if the US senate were to pass a cap and trade bill now, it would stand little chance of enactment. It would no doubt be different from the House version and have to go through conference committee to settle the differences, then voted on by both houses. It won in the House the first time by 7 votes. It seems highly likely that four net vote changes to against would be likely since climategate broke. The scandal gives fence-sitters some political cover. Remember that 100% of the house has to face the voters next fall. Poll numbers for AGW are falling.
I wonder what advice Obama is getting from his “science” advisor (John Holdren) regarding climategate. If he is minimizing it as seems likely, he should be fired.
I am concerned about whether the Senate would ratify a Copenhagen treaty. Distrust of the UN runs deep here, so there is a bit of hope in that regard as well.
Nomination for quote of the week: “If Obama puts his signature on anything at Copenhagen, he’ll be dropping a frag grenade into the Democrats’ canoe.” Gregg E. (03:15:09) :
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (09:43:37) :
Tallbloke (07:15) (Hi Rog.)
I think the question whether HADCRUT3 and GISTEMP could be affected by the same problems is a good one, but my understanding is that they take the same set of raw data (e.g. GHCN) and process it in quite different ways. I guess you could assert they somehow agreed to make sure that it all aligns at the end, but that’s stretching my Occam filter a bit too far, personally.
Yes, as I said, Phil Jones at CRU said GIStemp was inferior because of their UHI adjustment method. And I hear you about the satellite data, but it’s the early period where there has been a lot of readjustment going on on both sides of the pond. Obviously they both know they can’t get away with fiddling post 1979 data, but the 1905 lowpoint, and early highs, easy.
“David S (21:35:05) :
“REPLY: you can look at the B91 forms in PDF form from the observer here:”
Anthony If we were to take on that task would we need to record daily temperature readings or just the monthly average max and min which is recorded on the form?
REPLY: Daily high/low”
That’s a big task. I estimate about 10 minutes to copy one month’s data to a spread sheet. That comes out to 200 hours for one station with a 100 year history. That’s five 40 hour weeks per station and it doesn’t include checking.
But being a retired geezer and slightly crazy, I might be willing to give it a try. Is anyone else game? I guess we’d need to formulate a plan to decide which stations to use and maybe assign two people to do each station so they can cross check their results.
REPLY: On the NCDC web site, they already have preliminary data transcribed from the B91. – A
CO2 Science has a good list of Copenhagen references/resources here: click
Without photographs of every site they use, their analysis will be useless. Is the thermometer in the middle of a field or in the middle of a parking lot? Is it on a roof, or next to a building? Etc, etc, etc.
Without a full account of what is being measured now and what was measured in the past, they have no idea what they are really measuring.
Re Benford Law claim DocMartyn (07:09:44),
this data has too narrow a range for the law to hold. Not all data obeys the law. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Applications_and_limitations
Gordon, it’s a badge I’ll wear with pride.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jameskirkup/100018945/gordon-brown-says-james-delingpole-and-the-climate-change-sceptics-are-flat-earthers/
TonyB (00:03:48) :
I guess you’ll have to carry Vicki Pope kicking and screaming (that the debate is over). Best of luck and we may learn just how closed her mind is.
I’m puzzled by this remark:
“The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.”
Why would any government not push for a complete reexamination, one that might prove their position? They would rather rely on “data” that is unreliable?
If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything. — Fred Menger
Back2Bat (08:31:14) :
The satellite age is OK.
One would still need to know in detail how to turn energy into temperatures, since all the old records and proxy records are about temperatures, not energies, and that is why the satellite data is given as temperatures. I am just pointing out once more that the problem is multidimensional over the surface of the earth, which is not a black body radiator, but a gray one with varying constants all over the map, so it is not simple to get energy from temperatures as has been assumed up to now by the climate industry.
View from the Solent (09:39:23) :
@ Icebergs Everywhere! (02:43:29) :
Could anyone tell me of a layman’s reference site for writing British FOI requests,please?
Here
http://www.foi.gov.ie/how-do-i-make-an-foi-request
Er, that is an Irish government site old chap. In Britain the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ( http://www.ico.gov.uk/ ) publishes guidance notes for members of the public and is also the office to which you should complain if your request is rejected.
Information on FOIA is at http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/freedom_of_information.aspx .
Depending on the nature of your request you might find the Environmental Information Regulations ( http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/environmental_information_regulation.aspx ) useful as the grounds for refusal are more limited. (I think it is a pity previous requests for CRU data were not made under EIR rather than FOIA.)
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) (09:43:37) :
“We know that UAH and RSS diverge between themselves, and let’s leave that for them to argue about, but the fact remains that RSS at least tracks almost perfectly with HADCRUT3 and GISTEMP.
Now, obviously at some point the satellite data must have been calibrated to known surface temperatures, and I admit I don’t know how that was done, but presumably it was done back in 1979. For these series (at least for RSS) to follow exactly the same trend as HADCRUT3 thereafter indicates to me that they are all collectively basically on the money, plus or minus some noise.”
This fundamentally misunderstands what the satellites measure. They measure the brightness temperatures in the lower atmosphere. HadCrut et al. are measures of the thin layer a few meters from the surface at best-that is what they claim to be, anyway. Their warming rates should not be the same as RSS/UAH and that is evident from the way in which they fluctuate. The inter-annual variability is much greater in the satellite measures than the surface measures. All of that indicates that the satellites are measuring something which is more sensitive to changes than the surface temps. The only problem being that they don’t show this same relationship trend wise.
Additionally, the “perfect” tracking of RSS and GISS/HadCrut is fortuitous. The literature is quite clear that RSS has a spurious warm jump in about 1992 which is the source of it’s greater trend. The weight of the evidence strongly suggests that the surface trends are too high relative to the satellite tropospheric trends.
The response I generally get to the latter point is “well I don’t think the issue of UAH versus RSS is settled and blah blah blah” Don’t bother with that it’s really just frustrating. The response to the former point has generally been to take trends starting after Pinatubo and the RSS jump and say “isn’t it a bit unlikely a cowinkidink that the problems with the data would almost perfectly cancel with amplification over this period?”-but that argument is completely idiotic-the eruption of Pinatubo is completely skewing the result of such analyses.
“The Met Office is confident that its analysis will eventually be shown to be correct. However, it says it wants to create a new and fully open method of analysing temperature data.”
This statement is what is needed to know that the fix is in. In real science they would not begin by assuming that their desired outcome is the correct one.
Which of the various measuring approaches more closely track with the rise and fall of ocean temperatures? Would it be fair to suggest that the ones that do deserve greater relevance?
Craig Moore (13:43:21) : Well there is no single Ocean temps measure. Not to mention there are issues with those, too, although less well known than the land surface records. Importantly there are a number of adjustments made to them as well.
I recommend searching CA for “buckets”
I see Slashdot has a lot of fun delving into the CRU code too:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/05/137203/Scientific-Journal-Nature-Finds-Nothing-Notable-In-CRU-Leak?art_pos=8
Previous stories on CRU have had as much as 1,000 comments. Good to see the debate alive and well in IT circles.
Roy Spencer and the UAH team are now giving monthly ocean 70N-70S measuements I think.
That’s good news, that is exactly what I would like to see happen. A complete re-evaluation of the data. This way the global community knows whether or not it is trustworthy.
Without a re-evaluation by a 3rd party, the original climate data (while it may be correct) is, ultimately useless.
I’d really love to know why all my comments go to the spam bin 🙁
DaveE
[REPY – Speaking personally, I’m not sure. Comments that are over the top frequently get snipped without ceremony. There are so many comments recently, it can be hard to remember who posts what, so it’s nothing personal. Anything that winds up in spam gets reviewed and can be retrieved. ~ Evan]
HereticFringe (22:42:49) :
And despite all this, something is still rotten in Denmark… I believe that this issue is much deeper than the propaganda.
Kissinger said in 1970 “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” Rep. Henry Waxman, Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee is sponsoring not only the Cap and Trade bill but The Food Safety Enhancement Act http://farmwars.info/?p=1284 What the heck is he doing sponsoring a food bill? Especially a food bill that has US farmers in an uproar because it will put them out of business!
I smell something very rotten in Washington DC starting with the doubling of our money supply in the first quarter (halving the value of the dollar) Politicians are sleazy but the current bunch are just plain nuts.
“I am amazed that the US government, in the midst of the worst financial crises ever, is content for short-selling to drive down the asset prices that the government is trying to support….The bald fact is that the combination of ignorance, negligence, and ideology that permitted the crisis to happen still prevails and is blocking any remedy. Either the people in power in Washington and the financial community are total dimwits or they are manipulating an opportunity to redistribute wealth from taxpayers, equity owners and pension funds to the financial sector.” Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts250209.htm
This will probably seem way OT, but I believe it is quite a good example of what can happen if the output of unvalidated models fed with poor quality data is used by politicians to develop policies which affects the lives (and livelihoods) of real people living in the real world.
I am a veterinarian in the UK, now retired from the profession, so best described as an ‘ex-country-cow-doctor’. Back in 2001, I volunteered, along with many colleagues from the UK and around the world, to assist our veterinary authorities in dealing with what came to be major epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).
Right from the outset, it was destined to be a big one. Disease first came to light on 20th February in a slaughterhouse in the south of England and 2 days later traced back to a swill (waste food) fed pig farm some 300 miles to the north, where the infection had probably been present for at least 3 weeks. The next day (23rd Feb) disease was identified on a nearby beef and sheep farm. Unfortunately, that farm had sent a consignment of 16 sheep (asymptomatic but incubating) to Hexham market on 13th February, unknowingly introducing infection into the UK livestock marketing system at a time which happened to coincide with a seasonal peak in trading activity. Subsequent tracings showed that by 20th February ( ie when disease was confirmed in the slaughterhouse), at least 10 of the final 12 geographic ‘clusters’ in Great Britain had already been ‘seeded’ with infection, and it had also been transported to Ireland, France and the Netherlands. Like I said, it was shaping up to be a big one.
This was the first appearance of FMD in mainland GB for 33 years. The State Veterinary Service (SVS) of the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (MAFF) put into effect the tried and tested measures of the ‘stamping out’ policy that had been developed and refined over many decades (FMD was endemic in GB between 1900 and 1962). This included a national ban on animal movements starting on 22nd Feb, the earliest such a ban had ever been imposed even though the true extent of virus dissemination was at that time unknown.
Needless to say, given the extent of virus dissemination that had already occurred, case numbers rapidly mounted and the SVS, with only 220 veterinary officers, was soon overwhelmed. Reinforcements were hastily recruited from the UK and around the globe to work on the problem. We all slogged away from day to day, waiting for the epidemic to peak. (All epidemics peak, and this would be no exception.) Then, something odd happened.
Policy decisions on the control programme were removed from MAFF and transferred to the Civil Contigencies Committee known as COBRA (derived from: Cabinet Office Briefing Room A). COBRA was advised by the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, who had established a ‘Science Group’ dominated by four teams of modellers.
On 21 March the modellers delivered, both to the politicians within COBRA and (not agreed beforehand) the general public, their alarming predictions of a ‘huge epidemic’ unless further interventions were urgently put in place. In other words, the SVS had got it all wrong.
So, on 23 March instructions were issued to slaughter all susceptible livestock on all farms contiguous (ie sharing a boundary) with an infected farm without making any attempt to assess the actual risk of infection having been transferred. This policy became known as ‘the automatic compulsory contiguous cull’ or ‘the pre-emptive contiguous cull’ and was a far wider policy than the traditional measures already in place.
FMD control experts within MAFF, UK research institutes and elsewhere immediately questioned the wisdom and practicality of such an approach, not least because the probability of a contiguous farm actually being infected was known and agreed (also by the modellers) to be about 1 in 5. Consequently, about 4 out of 5 farms slaughtered under the policy would comprise only healthy animals (and with due care and attention, a lot of those farms would probably have remained healthy). With the average livestock farm having 5 neighbours, that was going to mean a hell of a lot of dead animals. They also queried whether hastily-assembled and unvalidated models were actually fit for the purpose of directly informing such a novel change in policy, partly because the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) had from the beginning been running a highly developed, validated and very detailed simulation model called InterSpread which was producing rather different results.
However, the Government of the day rejected all such concerns – perhaps plans for a May election influenced their judgement- and compulsory contiguous culling went ahead. The end result was, as expected, a hell of a lot of dead animals – an overall total of somewhere between 6.5 and 10 million, a high proportion of which were killed unnecessarily (close to two thirds by my estimates) – the contiguous cull policy soon becoming known colloquially as ‘post-code culling’ and ‘carnage by computer’.
Where the contiguous cull was rigorously enforced (majority of GB), an average of 6.5 farms were culled per infected farm. However, in Cumbria where I was working, the weight of infection was such that we had neither the time or resources (or indeed the inclination) to apply a rigorous contiguous cull. Instead, sticking to the tried and tested methodology, all potential contacts were rapidly subjected to basic epidemiological risk assessment. High risk groups of livestock were slaughtered, though not necessarily whole farms. Low risk contacts were placed under restrictions and subjected to close veterinary monitoring. We ended up taking an average of 1.1 farms per infected farm (the lower end of the range actually predicted by the InterSpread model), with no detrimental effect on the process of disease control and eradication.
In the aftermath of the epidemic, Government commissioned a number of separate inquiries, each with fairly narrow terms of reference (the usual tactic to minimise awkward questions).
The most significant in terms of Government response was the Lessons to be Learned Inquiry which reported in 2002, long before full analysis of the epidemic had been completed. Interestingly, the author of that report stated very explicitly that it was not part of his remit to investigate or analyse the extended culling policies used during the epidemic……..and then proceeded to formally recommend that extended culling policies should become part of future contingency plans for FMD. Government gratefully accepted this and with uncharacteristic speed incorporated the recommendation into the primary legislation of the Animal Health Act 2002, a rather essential response given that extended culling was actually illegal according to the Animal Health Act 1981 which was in force during the epidemic!!
By now MAFF had been subsumed into the super-department called the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the rebranding and reorganisation actually having taken place during the course of the epidemic (what better time to restructure such a key department than slap in the middle of a national disease emergency??!!) Therefore, DEFRA was now responsible for writing the new contingency plans for FMD. Hey presto! – in came a range of extended culling policies for future FMD outbreaks, those same policies being seamlessly extrapolated into the plans for a number of other infectious diseases despite significant epidemiological differences.
Hang on, we said. What about the series of five peer-reviewed epidemiological analyses of field data that were published in the Veterinary Record during 2004 and 2005? Those papers concluded that the contiguous cull policy had been completely unnecessary and in several important respects counterproductive. Furthermore, the models used to inform the policy were fundamentally flawed and not fit for purpose. In any case, the compulsory contiguous cull could not have been essential for the control of the epidemic because it did not start until AFTER the epidemic had peaked, not before as was repeatedly claimed (‘shifting the peak’ = FMD version of ‘hiding the decline’).
Don’t worry, said DEFRA, we are setting up an independent body (aren’t they all?) called the Science Advisory Council (SAC) to evaluate all of the science coming out of the epidemic in a thorough and transparent way. In future, disease control measures will all be supported by sound scientific evidence
It is a matter of public record that the SAC was dominated by mathematical modellers, including some of those directly involved with the models used to drive culling policy during the 2001 epidemic (in other words, keeping things very much within the ‘team’).
Although two general practitioners were involved as co-opted members of one Sub-group, not one specialist veterinary epidemiologist with direct experience of the epidemic was ever involved at all (dissenting views not welcome, especially if you know what you’re talking about – no real surprises there!)
Although DEFRA publicly gave assurance that the published field analysis papers would be reviewed by the SAC, it appeared to be the case that the dominant group of modellers did not consider the Veterinary Record to be quite in the same league as their own favourite journals, such as Science and Nature (a bit of “redefining of the peer-reviewed literature” going on perhaps?)
Worse still, I have seen a document from one influential modeller (yes, it’s an email – those bloody things just seem to get everywhere!) clearly suggesting that all of the field analysis papers be ignored and not used in informing disease control policy (nothing quite like a bit of suppression to round off the day!!)
And just for good measure, DEFRA sponsored a Modelling Consortium (more jobs for the boys!)
I could drone on even longer, though I fear I may have outstayed my welcome already. But, if anyone has got this far without nodding off, you may agree that there appear to be several striking parallels between the modelling/modellers of FMD 2001 and the modelling/modellers of climate science (or ‘science’, depending on one’s view).
If you can bear it, I would urge you to read the following paper published by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE):
Use and abuse of mathematical models: an illustration from the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in the United Kingdom.
R P Kitching, M V Thrusfield & N M Taylor
This gives a fuller summary of what went on in 2001 than I have, but more importantly contains a thorough critique of the 2001 models, their technical flaws and their practical shortcomings. The following link should take you to the abstract page which will enable you to get the pdf free access.
http://www.oie.int/boutique/index.php?page=ficprod&id_prec=96&id_produit=293&lang=en&fichrech=1
As far as the climate discusion is concerned, there could be problems with the British govt because so many departments and ministers are mesmerised by models and just love their output, irrespective of quality or accuracy, ‘specially if there are some neat animations. The general intellectual standard is, I fear, exemplified by Our Great Leader G Brown now describing ‘climate deniers’ as ‘flat-earthers’. Hardly helpful in the current context and distinctly puerile.
My own view echoes that of many others: we need good data with any tweaks fully explained, and fair evaluation with all methods, assumptions, gaps, limitations, error ranges etc also fully explained. What we don’t need is some fudge-fixed one size fits all lash-up pretending to be something it’s not just to make a ‘good story’.
There is probably little doubt that the climate is changing – I would be very surprised and more than a little concerned if it’s not – but I can’t honestly believe that such a complex system, probably better described as an interaction of multiple complex systems, can really be hypersensitive to a single factor such as CO2 concentration. In nature, things are seldom that simple. As so many have pointed out before, correlation does not mean causation.
Good luck to all you sharp brains out there. We are all relying on you to sort out this bugger’s muddle as best as you can.
Adrian,
That is a damn fine report. Thank you.
Shades of Orwell’s, 1984 .. yet, once again. ☺
It seems the worst fear we can have is not the damn problem, but the bureaucracy’s and technocrats’ solutions. It is playing out well for the pesky GW affair, wot?
“… ministers are mesmerized by models and just love their output, irrespective of quality or accuracy, ’specially if there are some neat animations.” ☺ ☺ Hilarious. (Or sad.)
PM Brown speaks into his intercom, “Moneypenny … more popcorn please … this cartoon about polar bears is getting good. And there are flying pink elephants too. Wheeeeeeeeee … ” ☺ ☺
We have an aggressive green left here in Canada, headed by a bozo named Lizzie May who seems to be on the same plan as your Bozo Brown. Our Environment Minister has stated firmly that Canada will do nothing about CO2 emissions unless the USA does … as it would be economic suicide for Canada. The fear we have here in the Frozen North is that Saint Obama and his sidekick, The Goracle, will fly into Copenhagen on a solar-wind plane and (even tho there is no law to support them) sign some idiot treaty they can never adhere to .. and then Canada will do likewise. Hrumpph! If it was not so !#$^%!^!! cold here I’d move away next week so I could avoid the media crap. Record cold here forecast for the Great Plains next week. Brrrrr.
Thanks again for the great inside story Adrian.
Best,
Clive
3rd party evaluation: to whom shall this task be given – disinterested extraterrestrials? Or both sides posting their own scientists and guards, co-located with each data collection equipment site – 24/7/365, armed and ordered to defend the equipment, to the death? (like some new version of “Alien”?)
In the USA, we are seeing judges, become unprofessionally and irrationally outraged at plaintiffs, suing over constitutional violations, without even considering evidence. (In ways which stink of coercion of judges.)
This corruption knows no bounds. The “Progressives” are committed to an all-in battle to dominate. How would the people of the earth depend upon the integrity of new data including sensory placement and validation?
Governments have the ability to monitor any data transmitted over the internet and potentially intercept and tweak en-route. We have seen the willingness to fabricate and use AGW as a means to take full control of the sovereignty of humanity. The UN/IPCC et al, have no place in global governance – Just like the Japanese were stripped of the rights of providing themselves a military, after WWII. Once bitten by a snake, terminate with prejudice.
Allowing a UN redo is being “Politically Correct”, which only defeats those who play by fair rules. It is saying “We caught you this time and you best not do it again.” THWT!
The most disputed time period at this time is our last decade. It is not a science to read a thermometer. All data for the last 10 years is accurately available around the planet. Why can’t we start by reading the daily temperatures for the last decade and determine if warming actually exists? We’re debating theories without looking at the facts.
JMANON (08:14:05) :
Yes, just surprised to see that any “journalist” had even considered the effect of carbon rationing beyond the usual tree hugging garbage.
HMG’s own stats show a very sharp increase in those being thrown into “fuel poverty” as ETS has kicked in here (coincidence I’m sure). Not to worry though the numbers will level out. As the article points out… they don’t stay in “fuel poverty” for long.
Adrian Wingfield (21:00:12) :
Your account of FMD, far from being off topic, was most lucid, informative and indicative of how the climate change shebang will go. Many thanks for it.
The key lessons are:
1. Modellers are totalitarians unable to engage in handling objections.
2. When elections are upcoming, science is distorted to win elections.
3. Once the election is won, all the wrong-headed science is encapsulated in law to cover the politicians backsides.
4. The very last things the politicians consider are the end-users and the professionals who support them.
There was a noticeable shift in media coverage from Friday to Sunday implying that when serious questions were posed concerning potential for cover-up at CRU, a full-blown Establishment cover-up machine went into overdrive.
I would lay probabilities of >80% that CRU issues will not be dealt with properly, that ridiculous conclusions will be drawn in Copenhagen and that the Labour Party will use smear tactics on climate change to try and win the general election in 2010.
Once you have been on the receiving end of the Labour Party Stasi machine, you will learn the depths to which they will go to win. It’s not very appetising, nor is it very acceptable. But it happens.
I’m sure Ed Balls, Alistair Campbell and Harriet Harman would be more than happy to give interviews on how all that works, although they would probably be less interested in facing searching questions on the climate change debate. Priorities, you see…..
Hmmm… the Times story has been taken down from their website. Any word on this? Was it in error?
Ah, OK, it’s back up. It was pulling a 404 error for a while there but is reachable again. The combination of that and the fact there’s been no other media coverage had me worried for a second that it was repudiated.
Clive (21:54:35) & Rhys Jaggar (08:06:50)
Thanks to you both. It’s a pity I didn’t manage to get my post up sooner – I might have got a wider readership before things moved on.
As you both suggest, a mixture of politics and warped science is almost invariably a very toxic one.
Having been involved in a small way in the published epidemiological analyses of field data, I was party to the debate that my more highly qualified colleagues were attempting to open with the modellers and the SAC – attempting being the operative word.
As Rhys said, the modellers were clearly unable to engage in handling objections. There was a lot of to and fro about the nuances of complex maths and obscure statistical methods which only seemed to cloud the fog rather than clear it. They always seemed to be “cleaning” the field data, but exactly how or why was never explained. At one point it seemed that the output of one model was being used to validate another model (- is that valid??). All in all, there seemed to be a lot of effort to fit data to the models rather than to validate the models against the data. Par for the course, I suppose.
On a related track, between August ’05 and April ’06, I tried to engage the then Chief Veterinary Officer (the incumbent had changed since FMD 2001) in a scientific discussion of FMD control principles and policy.
Unfortunately, like most of the British Civil Service, the post of CVO is now highly politicised (about 90-95% political and 5-10% scientific, I’d guess). So, as predicted by Rhys (presumably without the aid of a computer model!), the result of our correspondence may be summed up in one word: obfuscation!!
What really worries me is that our politicians and most of the public simply do not understand the difference between the virtual world of models and the real world of observations. There is no doubt that model output can be very convincing, but, rather more to the point, it can also be made to look very convincing.
Perhaps I’m getting too cynical in my old age! Oh well, back to chewing the carpet.
In the words of the Oracle:
Cheers!
When will people wake up.I absolutely believe in climate change just not this man made climate change. the real problem with this planet is the greedy moneymakers dictating scenarios for their own benefit not the welfare of the earth.when will the real threats of deforestation, overpopulation,pollution and consumerism of none essential commodities be fully addressed.I always thought it was water vapour that increased earths temperature its impossible to predict any climate change.the climate has changed untold times, its nature. stop trying to think you can change or alter the planet by pathetic c02 manipulation and combat the real issues.Stop being sheep.If you research well enough you will find what a bunch of lying immoral self interested people run countries who can afford to cut and run and not be accountable when things go wrong.It really sickens me how people fall for this clap trap.Just remember people these idiots in charge wont be sitting at home watching their pennies as you continually fund this spiralling con.How many of you will be recompensed when it turns out to yet another lie.