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.
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.