Pielke Senior: NASA GISS Inaccurate Press Release On The Surface Temperature Trend Data

“NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis. The analysis utilizes three independent data sources provided by other agencies. Quality control checks are regularly performed on that data. The analysis methodology as well as updates to the analysis are publicly available on our website. The agency is confident of the quality of this data and stands by previous scientifically based conclusions regarding global temperatures.” (GISS temperature analysis website: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/)” [note: I could not find the specific url from NASA, so I welcome being sent this original source].
I, too, could not find this quote on any NASA/GISS web page or publication. Nor could I find an answer to Pileke’s request for corroboration on any site, pro or anti in this debate.
Has anybody yet discovered the source for this quote, or is it time to consider that it has been fabricated?

Smokey
This typically happens when an organization like NASA realizes they have made a statement that can easily be contradicted by the facts:
There is, then, no proof that this paragraph was ever given out by James Hansen. I do not know KUSI news service, or John Coleman, so I have no assumption to work with regarding credibility of same.
NASA and Hansen’s statements have been quite consistent regarding data and methodology – this one alleged quote is an anomaly. As you point out, GISS makes adjustments to temp data, as everyone knows and no one hides that fact. The paragraph reads fake, or like a bad paraphrase. ‘Manipulation’ is weasel wording. It’s very difficult to credit Hansen appropriating this language to defend methods.
As this quote is unsubstantiated, its provenance is neither confirmed nor denied. Any proper skeptic would come to the same conclusion.
As an aside, GISS use three different (and independent) data sets – global, US and Arctic. I wonder if there might have been some confusion here.

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Joel Shore (18:24:01) :
R John says:
Joel Shore —
C’mon how do you get around the logarithmic effect of the absorption of CO2 and any other gas!!! Adding CO2 at this point has zero effect on its absorbance!
A logarithm doesn’t saturate. What a logarithmic dependence means is that you need the same FRACTION of increase to produce the same amount of effect. This is why scientists talk about the effect of a CO2 doubling rather than the effect of raising CO2 by a fixed amount in ppm.
Ric Werme says:
‘While appeals to century-old science may help bolster arguments about the science being settled, it also implies that temperature should be tracking the Keeling CO2 curve, but it’s not.’
No…It implies that over large enough periods of time, the temperature trend should be upward, which it has been. On times short enough that the ups-and-downs associated with ENSO and the like are dominating, the temperature trend is not expected to always be positive. And, in fact, some periods of ten or even 15 years where the least-trend fit is negative are a robust feature of climate models run with increasing greenhouse gases.
Getting back to my original comment – are you suggesting that adding 100 ppm to current CO2 levels will have the same impact that the first 100 ppm did?
No. But, I am suggesting that appeals to “saturation” are bogus, particularly in arguing that this somehow contradicts the mainstream science. The fact that the dependence of forcing on CO2 concentration is approximately logarithmic is well-known, well-understood, and in fact the reason that scientists talk about the effects in the way that they do (in terms of a doubling of concentration””
here we go with the well-known, well-understood claims again. why do I get the distinct feeling that you neither know nor understand what is going in the atmosphere joel? Perhaps you might like to explain what is happening, maybe starting with the saturation of the peaks and the real effect one might expect from a pathlength reduction of 10 cm to 9.5 cm or how the width of absorption lines decrease with dropping pressure, or maybe the shifting of the peaks because of the pressure.
T

RE Smokey (18:10:15) :

The Scientific Method doesn’t only require that an upstart hypothesis must explain reality better than the established theory [usually done by making more accurate predictions, or falsifying the existing theory]; the Scientific Method also requires full and transparent cooperation from those proposing any new new hypothesis.
Why? Because the goal isn’t one-upmanship, or protecting lucrative grant fiefs. The goal is scientific truth, which is arrived at only by attacking and attempting to falsify a hypothesis by skeptical scientists – and even by those scientists proposing the hypothesis. Everyone cooperates in trying to falsify a hypothesis [or a theory, or even a Law – just as the current search for the Higgs boson is intended to verify or falsify the current model of gravity].
Whatever remains standing after all attempts at falsification is considered to be as close to scientific truth as we can get.

There’s a great deal of competitiveness in science (I worked in pharma/biotech and we weren’t any more open than we had to be), but what is accepted is that independent verification of results doesn’t mean examining one data set over and over agin, but replicating a study using information found in a manuscript. Even better, it could mean using different tools to arrive at the same result. Kind of like scientists demonstrating recent warming by direct measurement, indirect measurement by satellite MSUs and by examining the effects of warmer temperatures (glacier melting, for example).

Being ‘skeptical of skeptical claims,’ as you said, is the wrong way to look at it. The job of scientific skeptics [which includes all honest scientists] is to falsify a hypotheses if they can, whether the hypothesis is CO2=CAGW, or the theory of natural climate variability. Being skeptical of skeptics has no place in the Scientific Method; it is sophistry.

No, requiring that “skeptics” arise to the same standards as actual scientists is a way to wade through claims that are dubious or spurious. When scientific paper after scientific paper show the same conclusion, and a random web site disputes this scientific conclusion but does not submit this startling finding to a journal for scrutiny by experts in the field, I have to wonder about the veracity of the “skeptical” claim. If we don’t have some kind of minimal filter for information (otherwise, we’d be looking for medical information from Kevin Trudeau) then we’re left with so many claims that we would either throw up our hands saying we don’t know anything or pick and choose what to believe based on our biases. When “skeptics” state things that I, as a non-expert, can easily refute, I have to wonder about their reliability.

RE Richard M (20:31:41) :

deech56 (16:58:44) :
“Increased water and agricultural stresses and risks to coastlines don’t sound too pleasant to me. Food production is pretty important.”
Then you should be for global warming. Ask any farmer if warm or cold is better? No? You’d rather trust the ClimateGate team? Really? Why is that? The truth is most plants love heat. As long as they have water heat presents absolutely no problems. On top of that, higher CO2 allows plants to get by with less water. Not to mention that plants love more CO2 (it’s called plant food for a reason). The only “agricultural stresses” of increased heat/CO2 are imaginary.
Also, it appears you don’t question any of the AGW articles because you *trust* them as fellow scientists. Actually, that is very unscientific of you. I thought you were on the younger side because that unscientific trust has somehow become commonplace. You will learn eventually. You will find out that this situation is not unlike the 1960s in medical research. Those scientists thought they knew what they were doing as well. I think this is often the problem with new fields of study where researchers have little grasp of what they don’t understand.

Unless I am mistaken, the “ClimateGate Team” is not the group that studies the effects of AGW on agriculture, etc. You also post the false dichotomy between “cold” and “warm” when we are discussing keeping the range of temperatures around the levels we have been used to over the whole of civilization or changing things around. I don’t get your point about medical research in the 1960s; that was before my research career (unless you count my many microscopic examinations of pond water or fossil collecting), but I am no spring chicken, and I don’t understand why you are lecturing me about science.

RE: Smokey (21:32:43) :

Who to believe? Mother Earth, which is cooling as CO2 rises, thus empirically falsifying the CO2=CAGW [“AGW”] hypothesis? Or Mr Phil again? The planet’s verdict trumps anyone’s contrary opinion. The Earth is telling the truth.

I believe that would be Dr. Phil. Do you have a statistical analysis to support your claim that “Mother Earth” is cooling? A simple t test of a linear regression would suffice.

Up next: deech56 (17:34:56)
“Spencer did provide a decent analysis pointing out the flaws in Lindzen and Choi, but Monckton? C’mon. You don’t actually look to him as an authority, do you?”
Despite Mr deetch’s ad hominem attack against Lord Monckton [as opposed to trying to find any flaws in his scholarly paper], it is a fact that Lord Monckton is every bit as qualified as Gavin Schmidt [also a mathematician], or Rajendra Pachauri [an economist], or Michael Mann [a geologist], and just about all the rest of the alarmist crowd who pretend they are more qualified. They’re not, of course. Monckton is equal to the best of them, and better than most. And unlike the alarmists, Monckton isn’t suckling at the public teat. He pays his own way.
Also, glad to see deech acknowledge Dr Roy Spencer. He should remind Phil that Dr Spencer knows what he’s talking about regarding climate theories.

I asked a question; is that an ad hominem attack? OK, maybe I seemed a bit incredulous, but if I pointed out that Monckton is not a reliable authority on climate, that statement would not be an ad hominem attack – I could easily point to any number of analyses of his writings. Pointing out that his essay was not peer-reviewed is not an ad hominem attack, and neither is Spencer’s criticism of Lindzen and Choi (oh, and if it’s “Dr.” Spencer, that’s “Dr.” Deech. LOL). BTW, I am not necessarily endorsing all of Spencer’s writings – his LC09 critique is cited by people from all viewpoints and he has made a considerable contribution through his MSU analysis, but that doesn’t mean he is right about everything. So you don’t need to pit me against Phil.; he knows what he is talking about.

Finally, even I could find a better citation than the one deech provided by Knutti & Hegerl, who cite only Svante Arrenhius’ 1896 paper, with its high climate sensitivity conclusion – but without ever mentioning the fact that Arrenhius recanted his conclusion a decade later in his 1906 paper, with its much lower sensitivity number. By neglecting to mention Arrhenius’ correction of his earlier views, the K&H citation is little more than alarmist propaganda.

There were 101 references in the list; the Arrhenius and Callendar references were for historical purposes. Alarmist propaganda? You kind of lost me there.

The reason this AGW scam has made it as far as it has is due to the problem deech and Phil have both avoided here: the deliberate stonewalling of information requests by skeptical scientists, and the blanket refusal to cooperate with others attempting to to falsify AGW. They don’t care about finding the truth. They only care about the money and status that result from their AGW advocacy.
McIntyre & McKitrick worked long and hard to falsify Mann’s treemometer-based Hokey Stick, when Mann should have cooperated with them from the get-go. The hiding of taxpayer financed data and methods by taxpayer financed scientists is contrary to the Scientific Method. It is based on the assumption that AGW is a fact, and that the data must be hammered into conformance, or fabricated outright, to fit their pre-conceived AGW conclusions.
If Mann and the rest really believed they had solid evidence backing up their AGW hypothesis, they would certainly have produced it. The reason they didn’t is because they knew their hypothesis would be torn to shreds, just like Mann’s Hokey Stick was.

M&M did not falsify MBH98; they criticized the PCA, but we know that other PCAs (and other investigators) confirm their results. But you forget that Mann, et al. 2008 is really the new standard (well, also Mann, et al. 2009) – and Mann, et al. have provided solid evidence for their millennial-scale temperature reconstructions. The new studies build upon and improve the older studies. Science marches on. Of course, this just tells us what temperatures are and were and don’t necessarily speak to the cause of recent temperature increases.
And unless you have more reliable information, you might want to avoid speculating about scientists’ motivation.

1) Statement by James Hansen that mandmade GHG’s has given rise to a radiative imbalance averaging about 0.8 watts/meter squared from 2000 to present, which will “melt the ice, warm the atmosphere and warm the oceans.”
Prediction: From 2000 to present, ocean heat anomaly will increase by approximately 10^23 joules.
Result: Ocean heat anomaly increased by zero joules.

That is not factually correct. The latest data (which stay may have some problems, of course) shows a very significant rise in heat content since 2000: http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/latest-revisions-to-ocean-heat-content.html

If this particular plank was secure, we would expect more and more studies confirming the hockey stick. In fact, we find just the opposite: hockey sticks are being broken while more and more studies confirm the medieval warm period as a real global phenomenon.

First of all, your claim that AGW rests one way or the other on past variability is not really correct, especially since we don’t have a very good handle on natural forcings over the millenium timescale. Second of all, many studies have in fact confirmed the basic conclusion of Mann et al. that the late 20th century was warmer than the MWP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png So, modulo issues of how accurate the temperature proxies are (for which I admit there are valid concerns), most of the evidence supports that conclusion.

3) GHG theory predicts that as GHG’s are added to the atmosphere, surface temperatures would increase while outgoing radiation from top of the atmosphere would decrease.
Result: Lindzen & Choi show that this is not happening.

Basically, what this (and some of your other claims amount to) is, “I can cherrypick a paper from the peer-reviewed literature (where hundreds, if not thousands of papers are published in this field each year) that supports my point-of-view. Lindzen and Choi has not been out a long time and there is already a comment in the works arguing that it is fatally flawed. Heck, even Roy Spencer is very skeptical of it!

4) Climate models predict higher warming in the tropical mid troposphere.
Result: This has not been observed.

This is an extreme oversimplification of a complex issue, with various data problems…and, at any rate, does not speak to whether the warming seen is due to AGW or another mechanism, since the amplification is expected for any warming mechanism. (Also, the most direct consequence for the climate models of this amplification not occurring is that they would then be predicting a negative lapse rate feedback that does not seem to be occurring.)

5) Climate models can only hindcast the 1945 – 1976 decline by assuming a high level of human caused aerosol pollution.
Result: A recent paper by Gunnar Myher concuded that the cooling effect of these aerosols has been overstated by 30%.

Again, that is a claim made in one paper, which you choose to hold up as the gospel because it supports your pre-conceptions. Besides which, I believe that this paper spoke to only the direct effects of aerosols (unless I am confusing it with another paper), and I believe their results were within the IPCC’s stated (admittedly pretty broad) range for this forcing. And, they did not directly address whether their results are in any way inconsistent with the hindcasting (which frankly has enough uncertainties in it that such a revision might not make that much of a difference).
Basically, what you have come up with is a list of reasons to hope that AGW might be wrong, if you want to ignore the mountains of evidence on the other side and just cherry-pick a few results that agree with what you want the answer to be.

If your study is based on adjusted data, you should keep a copy of the raw data AND the adjusted data. Hansen uses adjusted data (I don’t know if he asked for the raw data as well). And then adjusts it some more. To be absolutely clean, he should have started with raw data. He would then have reported on what he did to the raw data to adjust it, and then reported on the analysis. He muddied his own work by using adjusted data to start with. If it had been me, I would have required copies of the original raw data sheets be sent to me from who ever keeps them.
By the way, Hansen’s work has not been independently verified. Other research groups have come up with other sets of adjusted and analyzed data that says something different (re: 1934 versus 1998, etc) than what his says. That means one of two things: 1) one of them (or more) is wrong, or 2) they are all wrong.

Even if it warms, I would have to see convincing analysis that rules out natural causes. The current jet stream, and it’s interaction with El Nino, is warming up the upper western states, as it should, now that the AO is hanging around neutral. Record high temps are being set but all due to easily explained weather systems. Therefore, you can’t take the averages from these kinds of weather related events and suddenly change the cause to CO2. If you do, you are being disingenuous.
Here is the truth. Short term weather-related temperatures are gathered and averaged over a long period of time. When you put them all into a graph, using whatever averaging technique you want, IE linear, running, or Hansenized code, it means that you now have long term weather temperatures. Period.