Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
This replaced the previous sticky, and I have this comment about the Economist. Bad form and unprofessional to use the word “denialists”. For WUWT readers who wish to complain: letters@economist.com or use their online form here. – Anthony
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ECONOMIST
On Dec 11th, the Economist published an unsigned article attacking both me and my work. This open letter is my reply.
TO: The Person Unwilling to Sign Their Economist Article
Dear Sir or Madam;
Recently, you wrote a scathing article about me in the Economist discussing my post called The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero. Some of it was deserved, but most was undeserved and false. The URL for your unprinicpled attack is http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/trust_scientists … trust_scientists? Trust_scientists?? Have you read the CRU emails?
But I digress … you begin by quoting from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, viz:
A change in the type of thermometer shelter used at many Australian observation sites in the early 20th century resulted in a sudden drop in recorded temperatures which is entirely spurious. It is for this reason that these early data are currently not used for monitoring climate change. Other common changes at Australian sites over time include location moves, construction of buildings or growth of vegetation around the observation site and, more recently, the introduction of Automatic Weather Stations.
The impacts of these changes on the data are often comparable in size to real climate variations, so they need to be removed before long-term trends are investigated.
While this is true, it doesn’t apply. None of the GHCN adjustments are from any of those sources. This is because the GHCN does not adjust for location moves. Nor does it adjust for construction of buildings, nor for any of the other items listed. The GHCN uses none of those to make its adjustments. So all of that is totally meaningless.
Next, you say the “explanation for the dramatic change in 1941 is simple”:
As previously advised, the main temperature station moved to the radar station at the newly built Darwin airport in January 1941. The temperature station had previously been at the Darwin Post Office in the middle of the CBD, on the cliff above the port. Thus, there is a likely factor of removal of a slight urban heat island effect from 1941 onwards. However, the main factor appears to be a change in screening. The new station located at Darwin airport from January 1941 used a standard Stevenson screen. However, the previous station at Darwin PO did not have a Stevenson screen. Instead, the instrument was mounted on a horizontal enclosure without a back or sides. The postmaster had to move it during the day so that the direct tropical sun didn’t strike it! Obviously, if he forgot or was too busy, the temperature readings were a hell of a lot hotter than it really was.
This might make sense if there were any “dramatic change in 1941”. But as I clearly stated in my article, <b>there is no such dramatic change</b>. The drop in temperature was gradual and lasted from 1936 to 1940. The change from 1940 to 1941 was quite average. So that claim of yours is nonsense as well. In any case, the change in screening did not coincide with the 1941 move. In my article I cited a reference to a picture of a Stevenson Screen in use in Darwin at the turn of the century. Perhaps you didn’t bother to read that.
So, to sum up your first arguments, changes in the Stevenson Screens and other local conditions cannot be the explanation for any of the GHCN adjustments because 1) the GHCN doesn’t use local conditions to make adjustments and 2) the timing of the screen change is wrong. In addition, there was no “dramatic change in 1941”.Next, you point out two actual mistakes I did make.
First, in my proofreading I did not catch that I that I had written “the 1941 adjustment” when I meant the 1930 adjustment. That should have been obvious to me, because there is no 1941 GHCN adjustment. My bad.
Second, I had said that the Darwin temperature data couldn’t have been adjusted by using the GHCN method. This method requires five neighboring stations to which Darwin can be compared. Why couldn’t the GHCN method be used? I said it was because in the earlier time periods like the 1930s, there were no such stations covering that time period within 500 km of Darwin. I was wrong, it fact there is one such station.
Neither of these errors of mine affect my point, which is that there are not enough neighboring stations to adjust Darwin using the main GHCN method. The GHCN folks mention this possibility, saying:
Also, not all stations could be adjusted. Remote stations for which we could not produce an adequate reference series (the correlation between first-difference station time series and its reference time series must be 0.80 or greater) were not adjusted. The homogeneity-adjusted version of GHCN includes only those stations that were deemed homogeneous and those stations we could reliably adjust to make them homogeneous.
Unfortunately, they adjusted Darwin anyway. Consider the GHCN adjustment in 1920. To find five stations around Darwin covering 1920, you have to go out 1,250 km. Nor is there any guarantee that those stations will be suitable. You need to have five stations with an 80% correlation with the Darwin record … I wish you the best of luck finding those five stations.
So while my statement about stations nearer than Daly Waters was wrong as you point out (there is one nearer station that covers the 1930 adjustment), my point was correct – there are not enough neighboring stations to adjust Darwin using the GHCN method. The first GHCN adjustment to Darwin was a single year adjustment in 1901. To get five “neighboring” stations for that adjustment, you have to go out 1728 km. You fail to deal with that issue at all. Instead, you say:
“So is it reasonable, if the GHCN is using complex statistical tools to adjust the temperature readings at Darwin based on surrounding stations, that they might come up with the figures they came up with? Sure. No. Yes. I have no idea. And neither does Mr Eschenbach. Because in order to judge that, you would have to have a graduate-level understanding of statistical modeling. … I don’t understand that formula. I don’t have the math for it.”
“Surrounding stations”? We’re talking about stations a thousand km away and more, not surrounding stations.
And while I am sorry to hear of the lacunae in your math education, please don’t make the foolish assumption that others are similarly limited. I have no problem with the GHCN math. If you truly have no idea on the question as you say … then why are you excoriating my ideas on the question?
Nor is it inherently a complex question. The question is, should temperatures more than a thousand km away from Darwin be used to arbitrarily adjust Darwin’s temperature by a huge amount? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Next, as an aside you make the scurrilously false statement that I said that claims of damage due to sea level rise in Tuvalu “stemmed from attempts by locals to blame subsidence problems on the developed world, and cash in on it”. I said no such thing nor do I believe it. The claims stemmed from misguided environmentalists.
Next, you say “He makes it sound as if he’s just happened to stumble across this one site whilst perusing a debate over climate change in northern Australia. But as his link to that conversation from 2000 makes clear, Mr Eschenbach is already aware that climate change denialists have been trumpeting the apparent anomalies at Darwin for nine years.” BZZZZT, poor understanding of the implications of chronology. I looked up the conversation after I stumbled across Darwin. How dare you accuse me of lying? As I said, I went to AIS to see if what Professor Karlen had said was true. I called up a list of all of the stations in Australia that covered 1900-2000. Darwin was the first on the list, so that’s the one I looked at. Try it and see. You accusation is both wrong and totally unfounded.
“[Climate change denialists] do so because of that errant data at Darwin from before 1941, which makes it look as though there was a cooling trend there. The fact that climate-change researchers have to do a particularly strong correction on the data at Darwin, because they moved their dang instruments from the downtown post office to the airport, makes Darwin a perfect place to look for support if you want to claim that climate-change scientists are cooking the data.”
While a correction in Darwin is perhaps necessary, it is cannot be because they “moved their dang instruments” in January of 1941. LOOK AT THE DATA. There is no big change in January of 1941. It occurred gradually over the previous five years. So your theory falls apart upon the simplest examination of the facts.
Next you say: “Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand.”
Your understanding of statistics is as poor as your understanding of chronology. The statistics used by GHCN are average college level tools. You are dazzled by the fact that you don’t understand them, so you make the incredibly foolish assumption that no one without “a PhD in a related field” can understand them either. Some of us actually paid attention in class, you know.
Finally, you use your closing arguments to cheerlead for peer review. Curiously, I agree with you in theory … but the peer review system in climate science is badly broken. First, as the CRU emails clearly show, it has been subjected to enormous “old-boy” pressures to pass through bad studies without a second glance, and to deny opposing papers a fair hearing. How do you think we got the Hockeystick and its cousins? Here’s Phil Jones from the emails, talking about keeping peer-reviewed papers out of the IPCC report:
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
And you give your article the URL “trust_scientists”???
Second, the peer-review system is ripe for abuse. This is because the reviewers often know who the author is, while the reviewers (like you) hide in anonymity. This invites malfeasance. The system needs to be changed so that after the review, the [authors] sign their names to the paper as well as reviewers. At present, we have no way of knowing whether the paper was seriously reviewed by inquiring scientists, or simply passed through by the authors friends.
So I, like you, support peer review. I just want a peer review system that works. It must be double blind during the review period, with neither the reviewers nor the author knowing the others’ names. And the reviewers should reveal their names at the end, so that we know it wasn’t just the author’s best mates doing the author a favor.
Since we have an easily manipulated system instead of a real peer review system, I opt for public peer review by putting my work on the web. This lets anyone, even anonymous innumerates like yourself, register your objections.
Finally, the Economist did not contact me before publishing an article full of false accusations, incorrect assumptions and wrong statements … looks like peer review is not the only system in trouble here. I thought journalists were under an obligation to check their facts before making accusations …
Willis Eschenbach
an B (16:40:28) :
–bill (02:16:14) :
steven mosher (23:49:41) :
I think if you look back at the FOI requests CRU very early on said that the free data was already available at GISS / GHCN. It’s just that no one believed them–
That’s not accurate. A bunch of free data has always been “available”. What has never been available, among other things, is what data out of that pile CRU actually used.
The gave Mcintyre (or group) a list of stations used some time ago. It is very easy subtract from this list the giss/ghcn stations. Those left are CRU only stations.
In fact McIntyre has done it already in October 2007:
Argentina: CRU had quite a few stations not at GHCN.
Australia: nearly all match, but two CRU stations didn’t match GHCN – Maryborough and Brisbane Airport. Why these?
Austria – quite a few stations not at GHCN
Bolivia – a couple didn’t match
Brazil – a couple didn’t match
Canada – quite a few stations not at GHCN. I noticed a duplicate GHCN for Parry Sound, which is near Toronto and which occurs in two alter egos in GHCN.
Chile – a couple didn’t match. A couple were called “UNKNOWN” in the CRU list. Perhaps they are connected to the UCAR “Bogus Stations”.
China – quite a few stations not at GHCN
Denmark – a couple didn’t match
Dominica – a couple didn’t match
Germany – one didn’t match
Finland – one (Kuopio) didn’t match
Greenland – possibly a couple didn’t match
Guinea – one didn’t match
Iran – one didn’t match
Ireland – one may not match (Phoenix Park)
Israel – a few don’t match
Italy – a couple don’t match
Kyrgyz republic – one doesn’t match
Netherlands – a couple don’t match
Norway – a few don’t match
Oceania — a few don’t match
Peru – one doesn’t match
Sweden – a few don’t match
Syria – several don’t match
Taiwan – quite a few don’t match
UK – a couple don’t match (Kirkwall, Wick)
USA – about 25 don’t match e.g. Moroni, Lahontan
Russia – a couple may not match
http://climateaudit.org/2007/10/03/a-first-look-at-the-cru-station-list/
So what is your beef now!
bill (17:19:57) :
Don’t know what their beef is, but I can tell you what mine is. I had asked in the FOI request for a list of the stations used, and which data for each station they had used. They replied with a list of the stations but didn’t say where they got the data. Was it from the Aussies? From GHCN? From the WMO? Half an answer is no answer at all …
bill (02:16:14) :
Bill as one of the people who wrote an FOIA to CRU I will tell you that I asked for the data AS USED. Not a representation that they used GHCN, but rather the ACTUAL DATA AS USED. You see they could point me to GHCN, but I still need to verify that they used it. That they downloaded it properly. that they ingested it properly into their code.
See Willis’ responses as well. Basically I had seen GISS screw up data ingesting from USHCN.
Try this. Next time you get stopped by a cop and he asks for your license, give him the number of the DMV and tell him you got your license there.
We have 3 different sites for
Darwin(oops, make that Wellington, NZ!). So why not simply take the three relevant intervals (excluding overlaps) and treat them as if they were three different stations entirely?Look at the three different raw trends and combine them (on a pro-rated basis). It seems to me that combining the graphs first and then trying to dope out the trend is an utterly wrong way to go about it.
First figure the trend (as outlined above). Once one has figured out the composite trend, then, and only then, combine the graphs (color coding them for station moves) using the correct overall trend as a guide.
The result is a graph for data adjusted only for station moves. (Other adjustments might be called for.)
Nick from NYC,
I’ll reply more fully tomorrow. Did a first pass look. Not totally sure on the data sources for the AIS data you linked and how they relate to the GISS data that could be really important to resolve your question.
I’ll look at it some more before a better reply. My first impression is they are almost inverse between GISS and the AIS source. Interesting. Let me poke some more.
When I plot the GISS “raw” vs “homogenized” I again got data nudged towards a common curve type. But your AIS sources may say otherwise…the joy of open review!
Green RD Manager (15:12:22) :
Ian,
Graph the change values they made to the raw over time for the station you are interested in. My interest now is are they forcing all raws to a rough model curve. What has shown up for curve modification is a stepwise adjustment to stations that does not fit any UHI or station change reasoning that I can find.
That has generally meant at least in my region:
Make the 1900 to mid 60s area flatter. Sometimes they must push up sometimes they must push down. Make sure the 1930s are not well above the 90s. Ensure the late 20th century has a steep ramp. I want to know how widespread this theme is.
Chalk up another for the flattening the past theme. Here’s what Calgary Int’l looks like:
http://tinypic.com/r/2isd3c0/6
I added a 15 year moving average to both the raw (in blue) and adjusted (in red) data and what they’ve done is quite striking. The warm “blip” between roughly 1915-40 has been adjusted down by as much as a full degree C while leaving the cold years in the late 1800’s and warm years post 1970’s more or less alone. Niiiiiiice.
I haven’t had any luck digging out metadata on the site or even spotting the weather station on GoogleEarth for that matter. The coordinates are listed as 51° 6.600′ N, 114° 1.200′ W according to Canada’s National Climate Data and Information Archive if someone else wants to give it a go. This plots smack dab on the road that loops right past the current terminal building. It’s a veritable sea of concrete and asphalt. Perfect site for a weather station. /sarc
The adjustment curve itself is an interesting shape.
• The early years are a constant -0.1C.
• 1902 is the start of the steep decline
• 1912-1919 – the greatest negative correction to the data set bottoms out at -1C over this period
• 1920-1985 – slowly bringing the adjustment back up to 0C
• 1986+ requires no adjustment
So UHI (or something) was apparently just dreadful in the early part of last century, but then whatever the problem was… well it seems to have gone away and requires no correction by the end of the (warming) data series?! Maybe GISS has a perfectly valid reason to do this, but it certainly makes me suspicious when basically *just* the inconvenient warm years require such a large downward adjustment and the endpoints aren’t shifted much. Meanwhile, the proliferation of airport tarmac through the 70’s and 80’s doesn’t require a correction? Go figure.
If you add up enough of these squirrely “homogenized” data series from around the world where the past has been artificially lowered, then no wonder we’re talking about tipping points, melting ice caps and crippling taxation. Talk about gaming the system. Oh and this station also apparently falls into the ‘dropout’ category since NCDC/GISS only have data up to 1990 while the weather station is indeed still up and running… It’s snowing. 😉
Green RD manager
California station adjustments
Good work. Those agw hacks who protest that when all the dust settles from accusations of fraudulent climate adjustment, the climate record will be little changed, are missing or obscuring the subtle nature of the fraud that really is happening. The most dangerous lies are those close to the truth. The ocean-driven multidecadal cycles of climate – that agw-ers contempuously and dismissively refer to as ‘natural’, have always caused osscillations in global temperature. This century roughly speaking, temps rose up to 1940, then fell till about 1970, then rose again till a little after 2000. This recent cyclical rise is being presented as co2 reated agw. It is important to understand that the massaging of both the temp data and – equally importantly – the setting of the goal posts and the temporal frame of reference of the debate, needed by the agw-ers to argue their case, is limited and subtle. They ride on the 1970-2000 atlantic multidecadal upswing. The 40s – 70s decline does require a little hiding, not too much of course, just enough to make it look more like a plateau. The highs of the 30s – in reality close to our current ‘warmest’ decade, need a little downward pressure. But only a little – this is the important point. And the frame of debate must be post 1900s of course, they really do need, as they so charmingly stated themselves, to ‘lose the MWP’. That part is easy – it is natural for attention to focus on living memory and the recent period with the technology available for accurate temp measurement.
Thus the importance of the careful detailed observations of Green RD manager and California station adjustments. The adjustments observed are not a crude blatant twist to hotter now, colder then. Just clever massaging to manufacture simple conformity to a plausible ‘scientific’ story – if not a ‘party line’ then a ‘party curve’.
To be honest, my instinct from the biomedical sciences where i work is to be appalled by any sort of quasi-arbitary data adjustments. In the drug testing clinical – pharmaceutical field it is the sort of thing that can land you in prison. Data is sacrosanct, and even if it is clear that a bias or problem exists, data are NEVER altered. If they are, they are no longer data.
Nick From NYC,
I dug some more on AIS. They claim to be using GHDC and HadCrut…;-). Selecting the GHDC data set is what I assume you did. GHDC claims to be an aggregate of numerous data sets (they had a long list on the website). Much of it appears to be “value add” but the list is too summary to state definitively for any given set.
When I follow your links and use AIS myself, I get what you sent in the links. So I can reproduce what you talked about. However I am unable to trace the data set down to the station and back to reconcile with GISS output.
So, while the AIS tool says raw vs adjusted GHDC, I cannot reconcile AIS to station data via GISS. Nor can I understand what is their basis for raw vs adjusted. I am not in any way claiming the tool is bad. I’m just saying I cannot follow the trail from claimed data set to their output to try to reconcile what I see using the GISS server.
One idea could be we are seeing homogenization and then further “value add”. Another idea is garbage in – garbage out. Or it could be I just don’t get it…:-).
I did plot that station Raw vs Adjusted on GISS. I again got a similar stepwise adjustment over time and the same polynomial curve shape. I’ve added it to my growing collection. The plots you sent also had the final same shape, but were overall higher. The huge difference was the raw data for AIS already had the “standard curve” so it did not make the dramatic transformation that GISS raw(basically a straight line) vs GISS homogenized (standard curve) did. Hence my (unconfirmed) thought that GHDC via AIS may already have some value add in their raw.
Sorry I could not do better. Maybe someone can help us on how AIS, GHDC and GISS sit in a relation to eachother and adjustments. We really should know the answer of how many and what value adds are being put in. Open processes demand this.
Deb,
I followed the link. Looks about the same!
I’m trying to get a standardized plot for apples to apples.
In Excel. I select the custom charts. I used 2 line with 2 axes. Left axis is the temps. Right axis is the adjustment. For the trend lines, I put in the polynomial curve with 6 degrees. I put the raw in Red for the curve and the adjusted in Green. For the temps I try to keep the range to about 5 degrees so the amount of adjustment can be seen…
This may change, as we want a useful presentation that does not distort anything.
Let’s see what others find.
Importantly, Nick from NYC highlights that the full linkage from raw to adjusted to IPCC output needs to be understood. But it seems some good folks have been trying to figure that out via FOIA for years. A fully open process where the key players were not making it deliberately hard to figure out (as the CRU emails showed they were) would answer this….:-).
If you do more sites or adjust that one, let us know.
Watts Up with the global warming advertising on the front page? The link is pure propaganda and greenwash.
We are starting to loose faith here…
The “Frontline World” adverisement on the front page must be removed at once. This is a link to a hysteric/green-globalist site. Exactly the opposite of everything this blog is about. I am flabbergasted. It has to be romoved quickly!!
Algore famously had a questioner’s microphone shut-off to avoid embarrassment.
Now, Journalist Phelim McAleer asks Prof Stephen Schneider from Stanford University an Inconvenient Question about ‘Climategate’ emails. McAleer is interrupted twice by Prof Schneider’s assistant and UN staff and then told to stop filming by an armed UN security guard.
Compare with the honesty and integrity of the prominent skeptics, who do not avoid confrontation.
How do we make it short? Bring in the muscle.
Armed Response to ‘Climategate’ question
I like this hockey stick graph…I like it less when you zoom out and see where we really appear to be heading!
Crops just don’t grow under 40ft of ice…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/
Here is a simple way of framing the discussion on data corruption. Show two graphs from Willis’ example above.
1) Here is a graph of the raw temperature data.
2) Here is a graph of the same temperature data on drugs.
Just say no to drugs!
Shiny
Edward
Ed Scott: I was just about to post a link on Prof. Schnieder’s conduct. You beat me to it. This is disturbing if not at all surprising.
Please excuse the political reference. Green is but a means to an end. This walks like a facist duck and quacks like a facist duck, (yes the term is oft misused but this is accurate by definition).
1] Exalts nation [insert Green ideology for nation] above the individual,
2] Uses violence [ELF and ALF for example] and modern techniques of propaganda [Prophet Gore et al] and censorship [Denier!] to forcibly suppress political opposition,
3] Engages in severe economic [Cap & Trade] and social regimentation [EPA CO2 ruling, etc],
4] Engages in corporatism, [what corporation is not ‘going green’?].
Can’t keep up with the flood of WUWT. Did Willis Eschenbach respond to this?
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/willis_eschenbach_caught_lying.php#c2136694
/Mr Lynn
It’s beena long time, but has anyone found Waldo?
Green RD Manager (08:41:29) :
If you do more sites or adjust that one, let us know.
How about:
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/8283/honolulu.jpg
http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/5074/newarknycprawgiss.jpg
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7440/gissrawtemps.jpg
If, as was the case in the 1970s, the scientific consensus was that we were going to freeze to death,rather than fry, would we be talking about “hide the incline”?
I kind of suspect that it would be.
I also suspect that Carbon Dioxide would still be Public Enemy Number One because (a) it’s taxable (b) the climate models would incorporate a high negative feedback wrt water vapour (c) the physics would be unarguable and the Peer-reviewed literature r
irrefutably robust (d) lowering the temperature of the planet would depress the ability of the Biosphere to sequester Carbon thereby increasing atmospheric concentration of this “harmfull pollutant” refrigerator gas.
There’s a saying in Scotland that He who pays the Piper calls the tune. In other words provide the Carrot of funding to prove a point and that point will be proven.
No need for conspiracy, the carrot is enough for the willing. The stick is only required for those who refuse to toe the party line!
As a bonus, the UHI effect would give a sensible rationale to reducing recent temperatures while increasing earlier readings.
Unlike the current orthodoxy that does the opposite and seems to think that upside down is the same as the right way up – eg Tilander (sp) anyone!
bill (17:38:01) :
Willis you seem to have ignored my analysis so I will repost it. Please comment.
Yes, Bill, Willis has been rather quiet. Some cumulative questions I’ve posted:
1. (16:48:04) 12/8 What is the relation between the IPCC pictures posted and the GHCN corrections to Darwin? Do you agree that IPCC is based on CRU, and the CRU set shows no such corrections to Darwin?
2. “Sticky thread (15:53:24) 12/9 and here (05:11:33) 12/11 Any comment on the observation that the nearby stations do not seem to have big corrections?
3. (04:34:46) 12/11 Any comment on Blair’s specific information on the Darwin site history, and particularly on the explanation for a big change pre 1941?
And perhaps to add one – any response to the rather detailed analysis of The Economist?
On the face of it, some of the temp graphs posted here suggest that the raw data would even seem to suggest that you don’t have to use “urban island effect”, as an argument (of course there is an UIE, but even without it it seems the data shows a cooling in many stations)). That is, the temps from 1880 seems to be have been much higher and have been deleted to show only a more recent warming?
I am curious to why Anthony would keep this posting on the top for so long as this has not been done before. To me it means that he is convinced of it and it is very important. As a meteorologist I assume that he has really thought hard and analysed the data on this one. I still would like to see a detailed response to this
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/trust_scientists
and I am pretty sure there will be.
Why is this
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
so different to this (unless I’m color blind?)
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2009/anomnight.12.10.2009.gif
????
Maybe some SST expert can explain?
Having watched the video regarding the Brazilian forests and the Carbon trading schemes,
is it also worth noting this present protest, with maybe a sticky thread of other similar protests / events happening around the world because of the AGW / Carbon credits scam.
http://agmates.ning.com/group/peterspencerhungerstrike?unfollow=1&xg_source=msg_com_group
I think this explanation of what has happened in Australia and why links together what we already mostly know,
namely the connection between AGW and Govt’s regardless of how it effects the people.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2009/12/12/carbongate-the-great-carbon-heist/