Guest Post by Steven Mosher
All processes are subject to hacking, both from external and internal entities. The IPCC process is no exception, neither is the process of writing for science journals exempt. As recent reports show Pachauri hacked the IPCC processes to make them work against themselves and bend the system to his financial ends. An inside hacker, like Pachauri, can be especially dangerous since he plays a role in structuring the very system that they hack. Not only do they exploit a system they were meant to protect, but they also act in ways to prevent detection of their hacks.
What the recent disclosures about Pachauri show is that the IPCC process is now totally compromised, compromised from the inside. Like a system exploited by a destructive hack, that system may be beyond repair. It’s time to reformat the hard drive and start from scratch, as climate scientist Hulme, spotted 101 times in the Climategate files and closely tied to Pachauri, suggested–perhaps in a moment of clarity after the discovery of the emails:
Just how was the CRU system hacked? And can such hacks be prevented or are they a very part of the nature of authoritarian systems? As discussed in our book “Climategate: The Crutape Letters , now available on Kindle and in Ebook format, the “hacks” were focused on the publication process.
The IPCC reports were intended to be summaries of the science, both what we know and what we don’t know. These summaries were written for policy makers who would use the science and its findings to take action: action to prevent climate change, mitigate it, adapt to it, and to fund new studies where knowledge was uncertain. And action is where the money is. Every hack of the system cashes out into some form of compensation to the hackers: more money for their organizations or more prestige for themselves.
As the mails show the hacking of the CRU process and the scientific process itself was exposed primarily because of the “pressure” put on the hackers by the FIOA process. And as the mails also show, the hackers moved to thwart the FOIA process by corrupting FOIA officers. In fact, the most egregious hack of the system, Jones’s request that people delete mails, came as the direct result of trying to cover up a hack of the process, the hack surrounding the ‘Jesus Paper.’
During the course of writing the account of Climategate, we noticed that Pachauri, was named directly in the files 11 times and he’s mentioned by title in others. Before canvassing those mails it’s key to understand how the hackers worked to subvert the IPCC process and the scientific publishing process. And finally, it’s important to understand that they are planning counter measures that will allow them to continue hacking the system with the upcoming fifth assessment report due in 2013. As Jones indicates in late 2009 ,Pachauri and Thomas [Stocker] an IPCC Co Chair took up the issue of FOIA with the full IPCC. One can’t imagine that they argued for full disclosure or full compliance with disclosure laws. As detailed in this mail Jones’ alerts Stocker, who works at Bern in Switzerland, to measures Holland suggests for the next IPCC report. Jones alerts Stocker to specific comments on Climate Audit, arming him for the next battle.
Tricks of the Trade.
The high level hacks of the IPCC system include the following: changing chronologies, altering the appearance of graphics to tell a different story making up science out of whole cloth , and citing non peered reviewed literature when they could not keep contrarian papers out of the IPCC documents.
The IPCC reports are supposed to be objective summaries of the state of the science and are supposed to reference only works that are published in the peer reviewed science that met specific time deadlines. The deadlines are critical to have a fair and open process, ensuring that papers referenced have, in fact, been published and reviewed by others. Jones, however, finds such procedures to ensure fairness an impediment to his determining what is important.
Hacking the deadlines to get the ‘Jesus paper’ into Chapter 6 of the 4th assessment report of the IPCC was easiest hack to uncover. As the hackers left a paper trail of their activities that exists outside of the climategate mails. The mails, merely confirm what Steve McIntyre had already figured out. The mails of course add some background that strengthens the case, including the hacker’s knowledge that McIntyre was on to their game as well as Jones suggestion to cover up the hack by changing the “received date” on the paper.
By hacking the deadlines of the process, and shoe horning in a paper that would not be fully reviewed and published for over a year, a paper that contains references to another paper published after the fact, the hackers could ensure that lead author Briffa had the ammunition he needed to write the chapter the way Overpeck, his overlord, wanted it written: with a punch line more compelling than the ‘Hockey Stick’, that iconic figure of the global warming religion which “shows” that the current warming is “unprecedented in human history.” This hack is akin to check kiting or akin to planting older fossils with younger fossils as occurred in the Piltdown Man hoax.
To further the promotion of the ‘Hockey Stick’ message the Chapter 6 team also manipulated graphics, “hiding the decline,” even when one reviewer explicitly demanded that they show the graphic as it appeared in the original science. And finally, after keeping one skeptical paper out of the first two drafts of the report, as they had threatened to, the scientists finally resorted to making up facts on the fly.
Those are the user level hacks, but they go deeper. At the IPCC level the hacking is open to scrutiny, and as we see, the journalists following the references in the IPCC document are now finding these user level exploits. The deeper hacks, like a rootkit hack, involve the operating system of science, the science journals themselves. Manipulation of the science at the IPCC level is easy to document, but corrupting the journal process, the process that is supposed to feed the IPCC process with “trusted” information, is tougher to document.
Without the mails which detail how these hacks work, one could imagine that the IPCC could be made “hack proof” merely by adopting more controls and a more open process. The mails, however, indicate that the science publishing process has also been hacked. Editors have been compromised, and the system of peer review has been corrupted. Very simply, one can make the IPCC process as open and transparent as one likes, but as long as it is fed by a corrupt journal process, you will still get garbage science out of the IPCC process. And further, you could reform the journals all you like and the process can still be corrupted by the individual influential researcher who hides his data and his code.
Eleven Mails
The 11 mails mentioning Pachauri by name, only give hints at how the system was worked to his advantage. Reading them now in hindsight is instructive. The first from Rob Stewart to Pachauri in 1998, before Pachuari’s tenure begins, details the process of communicating about IPCC matters. As it notes, all communication should happen within the structures set up so that a traceable chain of evidence can be created. As the Climategate files show, this policy was violated, violated precisely so that the 4th assessment could be shaped in a way not reflective of the underlying science.
In the second mail Pachauri invites Hulme to a conference, initiating a relationship with Hulme that will culminate in Pachauri and Hulme working together to on UEA’s effort to win a government bid on the creation of a climate change center in England, as detailed in the third mail in the stack. That effort results in the founding of the Tyndall Centre, a center named no less than 11 times in the mails.
The interests of Hulme and Pachauri are clear. Use the science arm at CRU to drive conclusions in the IPCC that will drive funding into Tyndall and drive money into TERI, Pachauri’s organization, and CRU. The importance of funding should not be underestimated. Money works to corrupt science, not by changing the answer, but by changing the questions that get asked.
The fourth mail shows some of the TERI organization’s interests and one can see from the articles promoted in their newsletter that the agenda is clearly one of using the threat of climate change to drive a particular developing nation’s agenda.
The fifth Pachauri mail is interesting for a variety of reasons. The mail contains other mails, notably mails from Tom Wigley and Phil Jones who question the appointment of Pachauri, as they apparently believed that Pachauri was put in place by political forces, namely Bush, to serve corporate interests. This typical kneejerk reaction of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who alerted Wigley to the issue, on reflection, is somewhat laughable now. Hulme, as the mail show, defends Pachauri, his Indian partner, in the bid to get the Tyndall center, on rather odd grounds. Simply: Wigley points out that the “bushies” are behind this and Hulme defends Pachauri by arguing that perhaps Watson ,a Brit and the previous IPCC secretariat, has gone too far; and Hulme wonders why an Indian and an engineer should not be considered. Hulme strangely turns a political attack on Pachauri into an attack on his back ground. The defense seems entirely misplaced, unless of course there has been some other communications where these concerns were raised.
So why does Hulme go “racial?” Whatever the reason it’s apparent that discussions about Pachauri’s appointment don’t continue. Hulme played the race card and issue ends there. Perhaps Hulme played the race card so he would not have to explain how having Pachauri “on board” would be beneficial. Hulme’s partner is now in charge of the IPCC; and as Hulme writes, recalling the language of the conference Pachauri invited him to back in 1998, it will be a good thing to have someone in charge who understands that climate change is a North/South issue. It will also be good to have someone in charge who can funnel benefits your way.
The sixth Pachauri mail is from Tom Wigley in 2003. The topic of the mail is the strategy for responding to a single paper by Soon and Baliunas. It’s hard to fathom why a scientist would include the head of the IPCC as well as many other scientists on a mail that lays out the strategy for responding to lone contrarian paper. The Soon and Balinunas paper, did have the notoriety of being a skeptical paper accepted by the peer review science, but it was hardly a crushing blow to “the science.” Still, Wigley lays out for Pachauri, what the goal is. Rebut the paper to make the job of writing the next IPCC report, due years down the road, easier. So, the practices of just letting bad science die, or of letting individual scientists rebut the bad paper as they see fit are brushed aside. Wigley believes that there must be some sort of orchestrated effort to provide the future writers of the IPCC reports with specifically targeted ammunition. Science gets turned to producing papers to make the job of the science summarizers easier.
In the seventh mail in the stack Michael Mann appears to weigh in with his opinion. Included in the mail, is Stephan Schneider. Schneider, whose name appears at least 71 times in the mails, will later prove instrumental in getting the Jesus Paper into Chapter 6 of the 4th Assessment. He is a Trojan horse inside the journal system. But for Schneider, who “knows the drill” , the Jesus paper would never make it into the report. What Schneider and Pachauri see, of course, is that Mann is making the contrarian paper a political issue and David Halpern of the OSFT has been contacted. In the eighth mail, Jim Salinger will add his voice to the choir of those suggesting that the “bad” science be refuted rather than merely ignored. Again, one has to ask what is the head of the IPCC doing on these mails? Why do Mann and Salinger think that he will be remotely interested in the fate of a single paper?
In the ninth Parchuari mail, we see Hulme and Pachauri starting to take advantage of their connection through the Tyndall Centre, and Hulme suggests a joint publishing project. So we have Hulme, who brushed off Wigley and Jones’s political concerns about his partner Pachauri, actively engaging with the head of the IPCC to work on projects that both of their organizations will benefit from.
The 10th mail is interesting for one reason. It provides some rich irony and it shows what men of character do when a publishing process is subverted. The file contains an email from Mann and from Salinger, and both reference the turmoil cause by the Soon paper. Notably Hans Von Storch is reckoned a hero for resigning his editorship at Climate Research over the incident. The journal that he worked for had published the suspect paper, and his response and the response of other editors was resignation. Simply put, those who worked on the IPCC reports took the same stance as Von Storch, they would take their names off the IPCC report. Just as Climate Research erred in publishing the flawed Soon paper, the IPCC process has also published bogus science, even invented science where there was none.
In 2003 that one simple error was enough to get men of character to resign. Authors of the IPCC report would do well to follow their example. The incident bears some striking similarities to what we see today. The Wall Street Journal editorial by Antonio Regalado, is included in the mail from Mann.
“This week, three editors of Climate Research resigned in protest over
the journal’s handling of the review process that approved the study;
among them is Hans von Storch, the journal’s recently appointed
editor in chief. “It was flawed and it shouldn’t have been
published,” he said”
And most importantly, the flawed science found its way into an EPA document much as flawed science has made its way into the IPCC report:
“A reference to Dr. Soon’s paper previously found its way into
revisions suggested by the White House to an EPA report on
environmental quality. According to an internal EPA memorandum
disclosed in June, agency scientists were concerned the version
containing the White House edits “no longer accurately represents
scientific consensus on climate change.” Dr. Mann’s data showing the
hockey-stick temperature curve was deleted. In its place,
administration officials added a reference to Dr. Soon’s paper, which
the EPA memo called “a limited analysis that supports the
administration’s favored message.”
In 2003 the journal Climate Research let through a bad piece of science that challenged the “hockey stick.” That bad science made its way into an EPA document because it favored the administrations view. Clearly this was wrong. And Von Storch took the right action. And now, with the evidence that bad science has made its way into the IPCC report, its time for the responsible parties to follow the fine example of Von Storch.
The 11th mail which mentions Pachauri is important for understanding the events leading up to Phil Jones’ refusal to give data to Warwick Hughes, but its relation to Pachauri is tangential, except for the hint it contains about the kind of rhetoric Pachauri would use to further his cause, an early clue into his character. Buried in a series of editorials about Michael Mann forward by Briffa to Jones, we find the following 2005 gem from Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute:
“Not long ago the IPCC’s chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, compared
eco-skeptic Bjorn Lomborg to Hitler. “What is the difference between Lomborg’s view of humanity and Hitler’s?” Pachauri asked in a Danish newspaper. “If you were to accept Lomborg’s way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing” Lomborg’s sin was merely to follow the consensus practice of economists in applying a discount to present costs for future benefits, and comparing the range of outcomes with other world problems alongside climate change. It is hard to judge what is worse: Pachauri’s appalling judgment in resorting to reductio ad Hitlerum, or his abysmal ignorance of basic economics. In either case, it is hard to have much confidence in the policy advice the IPCC might have.”
Looking at the Pachauri mails in the Climategate files doesn’t provide any new examples of wrongdoing. We don’t need any. What it does do is give a sense of how the men who hacked the climate science operated. How they reasoned, how they strategized and what they viewed as threats and opportunities. If we want to improve the science in climate science and build a trusted system, we need to understand the “black hats.”
Building a trusted system for climate science
With the IPCC’s reputation in tatters, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion of Pachauri’s man at CRU, Hulme. Perhaps the IPCC has run its course. If trust is to be rebuilt in climate science it must start from the bottom up, with the fundamental data and code of climate science. The IPCC process will always be hackable, and so to will the climate science journals. Cleaning up the mess must start at the foundation of science with open access to the data and the code used in climate science.
The notion that science can move forward while individual climate scientists hide data from their critics is antithetical to the dictates of reason. CRU and others have no more excuses. All and any data used in climate science should be published under a Creative Commons like license, free for anyone to view and use. Confidential data should not be used; it is not necessary to the science. Phil Jones should be removed as an advisor to NOAA on data archiving and access. That’s having a black hat hacker in charge of the hardware. The code of climate science should likewise be freely available. In particular, we should press climate science to adopt a GPL license, one that enforces sharing of code. In part GPL is required because on more than one occasion some climate scientists have used the public code of others without re-sharing it. For example, they have used public code, modified it in undocumented ways, and refused to share the derivative work.
At the level of the journals trust can only be rebuilt by changes in people and principles. The list of people who need to go is easy to draw up. More importantly the Journals need to adopt principles of reproducible research. If a reviewer or official “replication” expert cannot recompile the science from source, both data and code, the science needs to be rejected.
Above the journal level at the IPCC level of course Pachauri needs to go. But the risk of him being replaced with a less crude hacker is high. The issue is that trust cannot be blindly placed in people. The entire IPCC process must be opened. We want to watch that process first hand and be eyewitness to every word.
The Hackers
All processes are subject to hacking, both from external and internal entities. The IPCC process is no exception, neither is the process of writing for science journals exempt. As recent reports show Pachauri hacked the IPCC processes to make them work against themselves and bend the system to his financial ends. An inside hacker, like Pachauri, can be especially dangerous since they play a role in structuring the very system that they hack. Not only do they exploit a system they were meant to protect, but they also act in ways to prevent detection of their hacks.
What the recent disclosures about Pachauri show is that the IPCC process is now totally compromised, compromised from the inside. Like a system exploited by a destructive hack, that system may be beyond repair. It’s time to reformat the hard drive and start from scratch, as climate scientist Hulme, spotted 101 times in the Climategate files and closely tied to Pachauri, suggested–perhaps in a moment of clarity after the discovery of the emails:
Just how was the IPCC system hacked? And can such hacks be prevented or are they a very part of the nature of authoritarian systems? As discussed in our book “Climategate: The Crutape Letters , now available on Kindle and in Ebook format, the “hacks” were focused on the publication process.
The IPCC reports where intended to be summaries of the science, both what we know and what we don’t know. These summaries were written for policy makers who would use the science and its findings to take action: action to prevent climate change, mitigate it, adapt to it, and to fund new studies where knowledge was uncertain. And action is where the money is. Every hack of the system cashes out into some form of compensation to the hackers: more money for their organizations or more prestige for themselves.
As the mails show the hacking of the IPCC process and the scientific process itself was exposed primarily because of the “pressure” put on the hackers by the FIOA process. And as the mails also show, the hackers moved to thwart the FOIA process by corrupting FOIA officers. In fact, the most egregious hack of the system, Jones’ request that people delete mails, came as the direct result of trying to cover up a hack of the IPCC process, the hack surrounding the ‘Jesus Paper.’
During the course of writing the account of Climategate, we noticed that Pachauri, was named directly in the files 11 times and he’s mentioned by title in others. Before canvassing those mails it’s key to understand how the hackers worked to subvert the IPCC process and the scientific publishing process. And finally, it’s important to understand that they are planning counter measures that will allow them to continue hacking the system with the upcoming fifth assessment report due in 2013. As Jones indicates in late 2009 ,Pachauri and Thomas [Stocker] an IPCC Co Chair took up the issue of FOIA with the full IPCC. One can’t imagine that they argued for full disclosure or full compliance with disclosure laws. As detailed in this mail Jones’ alerts Stocker, who works at Bern in Switzerland, to measures Holland suggests for the next IPCC report. Jones alerts Stocker to specific comments on Climate Audit, arming him for the next battle.
Tricks of the Trade.
The high level hacks of the IPCC system include the following: changing chronologies, altering the appearance of graphics to tell a different story making up science out of whole cloth , and citing non peered reviewed literature when they could not keep contrarian papers out of the IPCC documents.
The IPPC reports are supposed to be an objective summary of the state of the science and are supposed to reference only works that are published in the peer reviewed science that met specific time deadlines. The deadlines are critical to have a fair and open process, ensuring that papers referenced have, in fact, been published and reviewed by others. Jones, however, finds such procedures to ensure fairness an impediment to him determining what is important.
Hacking the deadlines to get the ‘Jesus paper’ into Chapter 6 of the 4th assessment report of the IPCC was easiest hack to uncover. As the hackers left a paper trial of their activities that exists outside of the climategate mails. The mails, merely confirm what Steve McIntyre had already figured out. The mails of course add some background that strengthens the case, including the hacker’s knowledge that McIntyre was on to their game as well as Jones suggestion to cover up the hack by changing the “received date” on the paper.
By hacking the deadlines of the process, and shoe horning in a paper that would not be fully reviewed and published for over a year, a paper that contains references to another paper published after the fact, the hackers could ensure that lead author Briffa had the ammunition he needed to write the chapter the way Overpeck, his overlord, wanted it written: with a punch line more compelling than the ‘Hockey Stick’, that iconic figure of the global warming religion which “shows” that the current warming is “unprecedented in human history.” This hack is akin to check kiting or akin to planting older fossils with younger fossils as occurred in the Piltdown Man hoax.
To further the promotion of the ‘Hockey Stick’ message the Chapter 6 team also manipulated graphics, “hiding the decline,” even when one reviewer explicitly demanded that they show the graphic as it appeared in the original science. And finally, after keeping one skeptical paper out of the first two drafts of the report, as they had threatened to, the scientists finally resorted to making up facts on the fly.
Those are the user level hacks, but the hacks go deeper. At the IPPC level, the hacks are open to scrutiny and as we see journalists now following the references in the IPCC document they are finding these user level exploits. The deeper hacks, like a rootkit hack, involve the operating system of science, the science journals themselves. Manipulation of the science at the IPCC level is easy to document, but corrupting the journal process, the process that is supposed to feed the IPCC process with “trusted” information, is tougher to document.
Without the mails which detail how these hacks work, one could imagine that the IPCC could be made “hack proof” merely by adopting more controls and a more open process. The mails, however, indicate that the science publishing process has also been hacked. Editors have been compromised, and the system of peer review has been corrupted. Very simply, one can make the IPCC process as open and transparent as one likes, but as long as it is fed by a corrupt journal process, you will still get garbage science out of the IPCC process. And further, you could reform the journals all you like and the process can still be corrupted by the individual influential researcher who hides his data and his code.
Eleven Mails
The 11 mails mentioning Pachauri by name, only give hints at how the system was worked to his advantage. Reading them now in hindsight is instructive. The first from Rob Stewart to Pachauri in 1998, before Pachuari’s tenure begins, details the process of communicating about IPCC matters. As it notes, all communication should happen within the structures set up so that a traceable chain of evidence can be created. As the Climategate files show, this policy was violated, violated precisely so that the 4th assessment could be shaped in a way not reflected in the underlying science.
In the second mail Pachauri invites Hulme to a conference, initiating a relationship with Hulme that will culminate in Pachauri and Hulme working together to on UEA’s effort to win a government bid on the creation of a climate change center in England, as detailed in the third mail in the stack. That effort results in the founding of the Tyndall Center, a center named no less than 11 times in the mails.
The interests of Hulme and Pachauri are clear. Use the science arm at CRU to drive conclusions in the IPCC that will drive funding into Tyndall and drive money into TERI, Pachauri’s organization, and CRU. The important of funding should not be underestimated. Money works to corrupt science, not by changing the answer, but by changing the questions that get asked.
The fourth mail shows some of the TERI organization’s interests and one can see from the articles promoted in their newsletter that the agenda is clearly one of using the threat of climate change to drive a particular developing nation agenda.
The fifth Pachauri mail is interesting for a variety of reasons. The mail contains other mails, notably mails from Tom Wigley and Phil Jones who question the appointment of Pachauri, as they apparently believed that Pachauri was put in place by political forces, namely Bush, to serve corporate interests. This typical kneejerk reaction of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who alerted Wigley to the issue, on reflection, is somewhat laughable now. Hulme, as the mail show, defends Pachauri, his Indian partner, in the bid to get the Tyndall center, on rather odd grounds. Simply: Wigley points out that the “bushies” are behind this and Hulme defends Pachauri by arguing that perhaps Watson ,a Brit and the previous IPCC secretariat, has gone too far; and Hulme wonders why an Indian and an engineer should not be considered. Hulme strangely turns a political attack on Pachauri into an attack on his back ground. The defense seems entirely misplaced, unless of course there has been some other communications where these concerns were raised.
So why does Hulme go “racial?” Whatever the reason its apparent that discussions about Pachauri’s appointment don’t continue. Hulme played the race card and issue ends there. Perhaps Hulme played the race card so he would not have to explain how having Pachauri “on board” would be beneficial. Hulme’s partner is now in charge of the IPCC; and as Hulme writes, recalling the language of the conference Pachauri invited him to back in 1998, it will be a good thing to have someone in charge who understands that climate change is a North/South issue. It will also be good to have some one in charge who can funnel benefits your way.
The sixth Pachauri mail is from Tom Wigley in 2003. The topic of the mail is the strategy for responding to a single paper by Soon and Baliunas. It’s hard to fathom why a scientist would include the head of the IPCC as well as many other scientists on a mail that lays out the strategy for responding to lone contrarian paper. The Soon and Balinunas paper, did have the notoriety of being a skeptical paper accepted by the peer review science, but it was hardly a crushing blow to “the science.” Still, Wigley lays out for Pachauri, what the goal is. Rebut the paper to make the job of writing the next IPCC report, due years down the road, easier. So, the practices of just letting bad science die, or of letting individual scientists rebut the bad paper as they see fit are brushed aside. Wigley believes that there must be some sort of orchestrated effort to provide the future writers of the IPCC reports with specifically targeted ammunition. Science gets turned to producing papers to make the job of the science summarizers easier.
In the seventh mail in the stack Michael Mann appears to weigh in with his opinion. Included in the mail, is Stephan Schneider. Schneider, whose name appears at least 71 times in the mails, will later prove instrumental in getting the Jesus Paper into Chapter 6 of the 4th Assessment. He is a Trojan horse inside the journal system. But for Schneider, who “knows the drill” , the Jesus paper would never make it into the report. What Schneider and Pachauri see, of course, is that Mann is making the contrarian paper a political issue and David Halpern of the OSFT has been contacted. In the eighth mail, Jim Salinger will add his voice to the choir of those suggesting that the “bad” science be refuted rather than merely ignored. Again, one has to ask what is the head of the IPCC doing on these mails? Why does Mann and Salinger think that he will be remotely interested in the fate of a single paper?
In the ninth Parchuari mail, we see Hulme and Pachauri starting to take advantage of their connection through the Tyndall Center, and Hulme suggests a joint publishing project. So we have Hulme, who brushed off Wigley’s and Jones’ political concerns about his partner Pachauri, actively engaging with the head of the IPCC to work on projects that both of their organizations will benefit from.
The 10th mail is interesting for one reason. It provides some rich irony and it shows what men of character do when a publishing process is subverted. The file contains a mail from Mann and from Salinger, and both reference the turmoil cause by the Soon paper. Notably Hans Von Storch is reckoned a hero for resigning his editorship at Climate Research over the incident. The journal that he worked for had published the suspect paper, and his response and the response of other editors was resignation. Simply put, those who worked on the IPCC reports took the same stance as Von Storch, they would take their names off the IPCC report. Just as Climate Research erred in publishing the flawed Soon paper, the IPCC process has also published bogus science, even invented science where there was none.
In 2003 that one simple error was enough to get a men of character to resign. Author’s of the IPCC report would do well to follow their example. The incident bears some striking similarities to what we see today. The Wall Street Journal editorial by Antonio Regalado, is included in the mail from Mann.
“This week, three editors of Climate Research resigned in protest over
the journal’s handling of the review process that approved the study;
among them is Hans von Storch, the journal’s recently appointed
editor in chief. “It was flawed and it shouldn’t have been
published,” he said”
And most importantly, the flawed science found its way into an EPA document much as flawed science has made its way into the IPCC report:
“A reference to Dr. Soon’s paper previously found its way into
revisions suggested by the White House to an EPA report on
environmental quality. According to an internal EPA memorandum
disclosed in June, agency scientists were concerned the version
containing the White House edits “no longer accurately represents
scientific consensus on climate change.” Dr. Mann’s data showing the
hockey-stick temperature curve was deleted. In its place,
administration officials added a reference to Dr. Soon’s paper, which
the EPA memo called “a limited analysis that supports the
administration’s favored message.”
In 2003 the journal Climate Research let through a bad piece of science that challenged the “hockey stick.” That bad science made it’s way into an EPA document because it favored the administrations view. Clearly this was wrong. And Von Storch took the right action. And now, with the evidence that bad science has made its way into the IPCC report, its time for the responsible parties to follow the fine example of Von Storch.
The 11th mail which mentions Pachauri is important for understanding the events leading up to Phil Jones’ refusal to give data to Warwick Hughes, but it’s relation to Pachauri is tangential, except for the hint it contains about the kind of rhetoric Pachauri would use to further his cause, an early clue into his character. Buried in a series of editorials about Michael Mann forward by Briffa to Jones, we find the following 2005 gem from Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute:
“Not long ago the IPCC’s chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, compared
eco-skeptic Bjorn Lomborg to Hitler. “What is the difference between Lomborg’s view of humanity and Hitler’s?” Pachauri asked in a Danish newspaper. “If you were to accept Lomborg’s way of thinking, then maybe what Hitler did was the right thing” Lomborg’s sin was merely to follow the consensus practice of economists in applying a discount to present costs for future benefits, and comparing the range of outcomes with other world problems alongside climate change. It is hard to judge what is worse: Pachauri’s appalling judgment in resorting to reductio ad Hitlerum, or his abysmal ignorance of basic economics. In either case, it is hard to have much confidence in the policy advice the IPCC might have.”
Looking at the Pachauri mails in the Climategate files doesn’t provide any new examples of wrong doing. We don’t need any. What it does do is give a sense of how the men who hacked the climate science operated. How they reasoned, how they strategized and what they viewed as threats and opportunities. If we want to improve the science in climate science and build a trusted system, we need to understand the “black hats.”
Building a trusted system for climate science
With the IPCC’s reputation in tatters, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion of Pachauri’s man at CRU, Hulme. Perhaps the IPCC has run its course. If trust is to be rebuilt in climate science it must start from the bottom up, with the fundamental data and code of climate science. The IPCC process will always be hackable, and so to will the climate science journals. Cleaning up the mess must start at the foundation of science with open access to the data and the code used in climate science.
The notion that science can move forward while individual climate scientists hide data from their critics is antithetical to the dictates of reason. CRU and others have no more excuses. All and any data used in climate science should be published under a Creative Commons like license, free for anyone to view and use. Confidential data should not be used; it is not necessary to the science. Phil Jones should be removed as an advisor to NOAA on data archiving and access. That’s having a black hat hacker in charge of the hardware. The code of climate science should likewise be freely available. In particular, we should press climate science to adopt a GPL license, one that enforces sharing of code. In part GPL is required because on more than one occasion some climate scientists have used the public code of others without re–sharing it. For example, they have used public code, modified it in undocumented ways, and refused to share the derivative work.
At the level of the journals trust can only be rebuilt by changes in people and principles. The list of people who need to go is easy to draw up. More importantly the Journals need to adopt principles of reproducible research. If a reviewer or official “replication” expert cannot recompile the science from source, both data and code, the science needs to be rejected.
Above the journal level at the IPCC level of course Pachauri needs to go. But the risk of him being replaced with a less crude hacker is high. The issue is that trust cannot be blindly placed in people. The entire IPCC process must be opened. We want to watch that process first hand and be eyewitness to every word.
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (09:14:23) :
p.s.
Mann et al, 2009:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/326/5957/1256
Mann et al 2008:
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13252.full?sid=6ccab757-7589-470b-b54c-4314d4e91137
OMG!
here is the deal. Mann has no credibility. zip. zero.nada. I’ve read his mails.
he’s off the rails.
You obviously dont read much around the hockey stick studies.
Start here
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/27/yet-another-upside-down-mann-out/
When you finish THAT we will go to 2008 paper.
Here’s what I think you have in mind:
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong,–H.L. Mencken
Interesting. I’ve seen my version attributed to Einstein on several occassions. In researching it I found your version as well as several more going all the way back to confuscious. A more appropriate Einstein quote might be:
“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
Anand:
Thanks much for making me aware of that paper. I will have a look at it asap and see if I can give you a decent response. Unlike the others here, it appears possible to have a discussion based on science with you. But I do wonder if you have read the full paper, and if so, what your take on it is.
S. Mosher:
So, you’ve managed the time to read Mike Mann’s (stolen) emails, AND formed a judgment of his scientific abilities therefrom. Good job. Now try reading his PAPERS and doing same instead. I mean, you’re all about the validity of the science aren’t you? That’s why you’re so concerned with the accuracy of the HADCRUT output right?
As for McIntryre, he has proven only that he cannot see the forest for the trees when it comes to paleo reconstructions, imagining himself some sort of statistical guru, even though he doesn’t understand basic principles of statistical analysis. That’s why he obsesses on principal components methods instead of the overall signal:noise ratio of the data and robustness of results to varying methods. He thinks that because he has some expertise in a specific technical area, that he can nullify the results of complex scientific findings. Well he doesn’t, and he hasn’t, as the NAS 2006 report made clear. And that’s why he will never be taken seriously, because those who DO have that training, know, from his writings, that he does not. Now, forget McIntyre’s “blog science”–what exactly in Mann et al 2008, or 2009, do you specifically object to, and why? And if you have any such objections, do you plan to submit them for publication somewhere, so as to improve the science?
Now, as for your obsession with HADCRUT data “secrecy”. You have one of two motives. Either you’re interested in finding out the likely spatio-temporal patterns of the instrumental record, in which case you could turn to the GISSTEMP or NCDC data/analyses (and check them against HADCRUT if you want, like Jim Hansen has just done), OR you’re interested in trying to paint a picture of complicity between CRU and the IPCC, in order to cast doubt on the whole notion that GHGs have warmed the planet over the last 130 years. Or is there maybe a third option that I’ve missed?
And yes I know why HADCRUT is cooler than GISSTEMP. As to your whole argument about the possible differences in the 3 data sets, have you read Jim Hansen’t recent analysis comparing GISSTEMP with HADCRUT? (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/20100115_Temperature2009.pdf) How can you explain their identity if they are not based on the same essential data and methods?
Vincent: Sorry to disappoint. Can you explain to me why any or all of the references you have listed in your comment, provide a superior reconstruction over the last millenium than the two papers by Mann et al. in 08 and 09? Because if you can, I will certainly have a look. But if you can’t, I’m too busy reading dozens of other papers to waste my time when I know I trust the basic methods and approaches of Mike Mann and his co-authors. Alternatively, you could just point out where you think there might be methodological errors in those two papers.
davidmhoffer:
Try to stay on topic and follow the thread David, hard as it seems to be for you. As I said before, take it up with J.Peden if you don’t like the greenhouse analogy, instead of parsing every word said in response to his claim. But I now fully realize that this is how you deniers operate–you try to lose people in the weeds of a blog/word labyrinth instead of addressing the actual topics inherent in the science. In fact, that’s pretty much all you people do, and the reason is pretty obvious: you don’t have a scientific argument. One learns a lot more about human psychology from people like you, than anything regarding the earth’s climate patterns. And with that, I’m done interacting with you.
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle, now I understand why you hide behind that nom de plume.
Coward.
Anand Rajan KD (09:19:41) : sorry, just saw that one.
Anand, if I understand you correctly, you are asking whether warm events can create an elevated atmospheric [CO2], via carbon cycle feedback, that lingers for up to a millenium. I don’t know, but it is certainly worth asking, and would depend on the magnitude of the spike, the subsequent temperatures, and the time integral of the available sink strengths after the spike.
What I do know is that is that the ice core [CO2] record, and the current atmospheric C 13/12 ratio, show no evidence of such a thing occurring.
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (19:04:31) :
S. Mosher:
“So, you’ve managed the time to read Mike Mann’s (stolen) emails…”
“Stolen”? If your credibility depends on being factual, then give us your evidence that the emails were ‘stolen.’
Take your time. I’m going to pop some popcorn.
Inspector of Gazelle Leavings: methinks you have encountered some brick walls. That is the result of existing in an echo chamber built on misinformation. You should have looked more closely at your heroes papers and the resulting refutations of said papers. You can learn a lot by reading the vast quantities of information available to sift through and digest on this most amazing, open blog know as Watt’s Up With That? The Yamal issue was certainly the deathblow for Mann’s work. Tree-ring proxy=bad idea. Using only 16 trees and being caught doing that=priceless. I’ve got a lot more, just say the word. I guess I am a “high functioning” learning disabled. What is your excuse?
Glad you’re enlightened Richard. Would it help the world know me better if I called myself Tom Smith, or maybe, say, Richard Sharpe? Or we could make a game of it–I contribute frequently elsewhere, so who do you think I might be?
Oh and Vincent: no problem if you want to interpret my logic, but it would help some if you read what I said first. If you did, you would see that I did not, and do not, concede that the MWP was a global phenomenon (as Mann et al 2009 makes very clear). For some reason, deniers are hell bent on proving that it was, as if this proves…something or other. The point was that even if it WAS a global phenom., AGW as a concept emphatically does NOT deny that other forcings can warm the planet (even though [GHGs] are very often intimately involved with such warmings, often as a strong feedback). The IPCC reports are very clear about that.
One more thing. Could we have had this “discussion” over at unRealclimate? The fact that you are able to post on this site even though you vehemently disagree with everyone here ( like “in the pay of big oil” isn’t the original conspiracy theory), is very telling to the person who is sitting on the fence. They read both sites. Ask questions because they want to learn both sides. At RC they are mocked and made fun of. Here, many poster jump in to help that person find the information they are seeking. Are you so blind that you cannot see that people are turning away from sites like RC. In Canada, nobody is watching the CBC (except for the curling perhaps), and they cannot understand that it is because they are cramming AGW down peoples throats incessantly. No balance. Everybody is dumb, but you are not smart enough to know you are dumb.
“Take your time. I’m going to pop some popcorn.”
Smokey, you’re right about the evidence thing–I’ll work on it after I’m done reading the interesting paper Anand mentioned above. Don’t go away now, just sit right there and wait.
Gazelle accuses others of wordplay, and the proceeds to do just that. Amazing.
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (19:53:40) :
“Don’t go away now, just sit right there and wait.”
Well with that, I’m off to visit other threads. Stay here or follow along. It’s up to you.
Gazelle
One learns a lot more about human psychology from people like you, than anything regarding the earth’s climate patterns. And with that, I’m done interacting with you.>
I’m devastated. You failed to answer even a single one of the major points I made, not one logical explanation of the physics I suggested you weren’t accounting for, failed to deal with both cases in which I pointed out that you were contradicting your own positions, and the best you can do now is an insulting paragraph complaining about parsing every word (I think that’s a reference to one of the cases where you contradict yourself and I pointed it out?) and then a refusal to continue interacting with me.
Summary; Gazelle can dish it out, but he can’t take it. He can launch arguments and accusations, but he can’t defend them. When caught presenting conflicting evidence he sulks and refuses to interact anymore.
That’s unfortunate Gazelle, because if you engaged in honest discourse, you and I might both learn something. The fact that you can’t even defend your own positions and resort to insults and refusal to “interact” further instead of putting forth a logical argument only serves to confirm in the minds of those with whom you disagree, that there was no validity to your position in the first place. Consider what an opportunity you have lost and the manner in which you have discredited yourself and those with whom you agree. I believe you can do better.
David Ball, do you feel better now? I hope so, because I’d like to hear your rational response to the following.
“The Yamal issue was certainly the deathblow for Mann’s work. Tree-ring proxy=bad idea. Using only 16 trees and being caught doing that=priceless. I’ve got a lot more, just say the word. I guess I am a “high functioning” learning disabled. What is your excuse?”
Uh, don’t know, that I actually read the literature maybe?
This comment shows that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. First, the Yamal “issue”, created entirely by McIntyre, had to do with Keith Briffa’s reanalysis of data originally collected by Hantemirov and Shiyatov, but analyzed by them under a method that did not preserve low frequency temporal variation, which Briffa was trying to do over a large area of Eurasia (hence his use of their, and others’, data). Mann had absolutely nothing to do with it.
And why are tree ring proxies a “bad idea” exactly, help me out.
And why are tree ring proxies a “bad idea” exactly, help me out
Tree ring data can be influenced by multiple factors such as variations in precipitation, disease, growth of other nearby trees, and so on. The biggest issue however, is that far northern sites (such as yamal in siberia) have very short growing seasons. As a consequence, the tree rings are reflective of climate for the growing season only, not for the entire year. Any climactic variations that are more pronounced in the fall, winter and early spring would not be reflected in the tree rings themselves. Tree rings are an excellent dendrochronoligical tool, provided that they are interpreted in concert with other reconstruction techniques to identify any periods of time in which the tree ring data departed from the climactic annual data due. A reading of several of Briffa’s papers exposes that not only was this not done, even the normalization to weather station data was done using only growing season records and not annual records.
I have no idea what I am talking about? Hantemirov and Shiyatov have come out and stated the data was misused. That only certain select groups were used and McIntyre showed very clearly how badly the data selection process was done. Not even worthy of a second year student. Now let us discuss this tree-ring proxy. It has been known for nearly 3 decades that tree-ring proxies are a poor indicator of temperature. It is an indicator of many differing variables, the least of which is temperature. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/ I remember dinner table discussion between my father and his colleagues nearly 30 years ago and they knew then how poor a proxy tree-rings were. Mann was told by his own handlers not to use them due to their inherent issues. Here is another great and informative thread that demolishes the work of your Mann http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/30/yamal-treering-proxy-temperature-reconstructions-dont-match-local-thermometer-records/ Anyone can grasp that a tree can be affected by so many other variables that would give misleading representations. Drought, disease, shade from surrounding trees, available nutrients, soil composition, soil density. Should I go on? ” Mann had absolutely nothing to do with it”, yet he used the data anyway because it supported his predetermination. The accusation that McIntyre “made it up” is spurious at best, and a lot dismissive. You will have to do better than that. To insinuate that I have not read the literature is an insult that I shall not let pass. I am glad that you have decided for yourself that we are all idiots, for your underestimation of us will be your undoing. You really have to get out more and find out that what you are basing your beliefs on is a pile of poor science.
Before you spew about using WUWT? posts to back up my position, I used them intentionally to show you that the science is thoroughly discussed here all the time. All sides, not just our own views. We also discuss things that are affected by climate such as policy. It is sad that the climate and weather that interests us so much has been moved to the political arena, but that was NOT the skeptics doing. Stick around, but be more polite. You will be challenged at every turn, but you will laugh and you will learn. This is truly a fun blog. Peace !!!
Mr Gazelle:
I believe we’ve reached a point in the discussion where I can draw some preliminary conclusions.
You wonder whether “…warm events can create an elevated atmospheric [CO2], via carbon cycle feedback, that lingers for up to a millenium”.
That was certainly one of the aspects what I was intending to bring up. The other one being the more harmless preceding conclusion that a proportion of the present-day rise could be due to earlier warming. But a conclusion no anthropogenicity advocate would allow nevertheless.
In any event, as you state, the answer is not clearly known. In my limited knowledge I am not aware of papers that address this question (and I have my own theories as to why). So I do concur that this “… is certainly worth asking, and would depend on the magnitude of the spike, the subsequent temperatures, and the time integral of the available sink strengths after the spike.”
Having been in agreement to this point – if rising temperatures can lead to a lagged CO2 rise, and rising CO2 can cause ‘instant’ temperature rise (speaking of timescales climatologically, of course) – we have already set up for ourselves an accelerating upward spiral of positive feedback from which there is no escape. Because if such were the property of the climate and the gas CO2, at some point in the geologic past the aforesaid sequence would have transpired (the probability of in this case is very high – 0.25).
But the available proxy reconstructions certainly do not show any such event to have transpired.
This, in itself, should be enough to give up the alarmism in the theory of anthropogenic warming.
And if we take the one final plunge – if we assume for a moment that rising CO2 does not cause runaway warming (but can cause, lets say other kinds of warming) – we can also see why temperatures should ever fall at all following a period of CO2 rise. There must be operational, forces that pull temperatures down even in a state of high atmospheric CO2. Maybe the diminishing trapping of heat with increasing concentrations of CO2 passively contributes.
Even without this conjecture, can we agree that there were points in the timescale when CO2 levels were rising or had reached a certain high, but temperatures were beginning to fall?
More reason to give up alarmism.
I have not fully taken in the latest Nature paper. I read the abstract and the conclusions. But it looks interesting to me.
Thanks
Anand
BTW: You lost the original argument you entered this thread with. Comprehensively. The admission is there in your own words. 🙂
Well forgive me davidmhoffer, if I didn’t respond properly to your cogent “arguments” about gazelles accelerating forever and radiation numbers apparently pulled from a random number generator, etc., notwithstanding the fact that the preceding discussions gave no reason for same. Let’s just say I was speechless and trying to fend off the other wolves. After all, I am just a gazelle.
But you say you want honest discourse, so wrt your explanation of why tree rings are a problem as a proxy, here you go:
First, the factors that cause the variations you mention, are well known, and are explicitly accounted for in the tree ring data collection and analysis process, via the collection of numerous cores, use of appropriate detrending techniques, and various other statistical analyses, such as the mean interseries correlation, the expressed population signal, and the calculation of the biweight robust mean to eliminate outliers.
Second, ALL dendro sites in which temperature is the reconstruction focus, be they boreal or alpine, necessarily have a short growing season. That’s inherent to a thermally limited site. Although you are correct that their growth is (usually) primarily dominated by the growing season weather, that is not exclusively true, because the dormant season temperatures, especially of the preceding spring but also the winter in some cases, can affect the rings through their effects on dormancy processes and subsequent spring phenology. This is why many dendro studies look for relationships of the ring variables with climate parameters of various different seasons (because there may well be effects in addition to those from the growing season). So it is appropriate to estimate the seasonal temperature from a calibration of same with the ring data. At the same time, however, the instrumental record shows a strong correlation, at large spatio-temporal scales, of seasonal with annual temperature patterns. It is therefore fair to infer, in studies at such scales, that the ring variations represent not just the trend in the seasonal Ts, but in the annual Ts as well.
I might add that this same principal of using the known correlation structure from the instrumental record–in this case of seasonal with the annual–and applying it to the proxy data, is the basis for the ability to estimate the spatial pattern of former temperatures from the spatially non-homogeneous proxy record, as in Mann et al 2009.
I’m not arguing that tree ring data are perfect proxies–they’re not (no proxy is). But they’re biggest problems are not the ones you’ve mentioned.
David Ball states:
“Hantemirov and Shiyatov have come out and stated the data was misused.”
Where exactly? I don’t believe you. In fact I read a comment by Hantemirov that upon the collection of more cores from living trees, they have reproduced Briffa’s findings.
“That only certain select groups were used and McIntyre showed very clearly how badly the data selection process was done. Not even worthy of a second year student.”
No. H and S had about 17 modern cores, going from memory, and Briffa used about 10 or 12 of them. McIntyre has no idea how that filtering occurred, because that info is not in the paper.
“Now let us discuss this tree-ring proxy.”
Yes, let’s.
“It has been known for nearly 3 decades that tree-ring proxies are a poor indicator of temperature. It is an indicator of many differing variables, the least of which is temperature. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/”
Complete and utter bogus BS. And if Watts wrote something that says what you claim, that is the same. You think all these folks have been doing dendroclimatology for 100 years and getting it wrong becuase rings don’t respond to T??????
“I remember dinner table discussion between my father and his colleagues nearly 30 years ago and they knew then how poor a proxy tree-rings were.”
You’re seriously saying this is some kind of evidence are you?
“Mann was told by his own handlers not to use them due to their inherent issues.”
Really? Who are his handlers then?
“Here is another great and informative thread that demolishes the work of your Mann http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/30/yamal-treering-proxy-temperature-reconstructions-dont-match-local-thermometer-records”
Right.
“Anyone can grasp that a tree can be affected by so many other variables that would give misleading representations. Drought, disease, shade from surrounding trees, available nutrients, soil composition, soil density.”
YES, THAT’S WHY THEY DEVELOPED METHODS TO DEAL WITH SUCH OBVIOUSITIES MANY DECADES AGO.
” Should I go on? ”
Depends on how much more you want to incriminate yourself. My advice would be no.
“Mann had absolutely nothing to do with it”, yet he used the data anyway because it supported his predetermination. The accusation that McIntyre “made it up” is spurious at best, and a lot dismissive. You will have to do better than that. To insinuate that I have not read the literature is an insult that I shall not let pass.”
Then prove that you know anything about this topic instead of being utterly infatuated with McIntyre’s “analyses” and making idiotic statements. What you completely fail to understand is that Yamal has no effect on large scale T reconstructions, even if it was fabricated, which it wasn’t.
“I am glad that you have decided for yourself that we are all idiots”
I hadn’t actually, but I will say I’m getting closer.
“You really have to get out more and find out that what you are basing your beliefs on is a pile of poor science.”
Care to join me in the field this summer for some tree coring? Or at the computer afterwards for the analysis? Or in between for the core processing? That would give you a real good idea of what we actually do, and why. Bear in mind that like many scientists, I have little money (actually none) to offer for payment for your help, because I have no grant to support the work. Contrary to what you may have read about us scientists, we do it because we love it and we love answering questions. So if you have the same motives, you’re welcome to join me.
Anand: The paper is important and germane to your questions/comments. Try to get a copy and read it. Email David Frank and ask him for a copy if you don’t have access–he’s a very nice guy and will likely send it to you. More tomorrow. Sleep time.
S. Mosher:
“So, you’ve managed the time to read Mike Mann’s (stolen) emails, AND formed a judgment of his scientific abilities therefrom. Good job. Now try reading his PAPERS and doing same instead. I mean, you’re all about the validity of the science aren’t you? That’s why you’re so concerned with the accuracy of the HADCRUT output right?”
1. I read the mails. you have not.
2. No analysis of the mails internals or externals can reveal whether they
are “stolen” or not.
3. Stolen or not they say what they say.
4. My point was about BELIEF IN CONSPIRACY. you had accused people here of believing in a conspiracy. I was pointing out that you should read Mann’s mails in that regard.
5. can you not read?
WRT mann’s science ( and others)
1. yes I have read the papers.
2. There are numerous errors that render them pointless.
3. Osborne himself had issues with the Mann residuals and the calculation
of confidence intervals.
4. Mann lied about his giving data to McIntyre. Osborn’s mails show that Osborn knew this.
5. Mann has admitted he is no statistician.
6. The pick two strategy for determining which grid to run the correlation
on is bogus.
7. using sediment proxys that are contaminated is bogus.
8. bristecones? bogus
9. Foxtails? bogus.
10. yamal? bogus ( RCS when the core count drops to 5 is bogus and you know it)
11. Shall we go on?
Basically this. Mann has made multiple errors over the course of his career.
At first I would have just attributed it to stupidity ( he said he was no statistician) Then I attributed it to willful ignorance. ( not fixing simple errors like mislocating errors in locating proxies after being informed of the error) After I read the mails
my diagnosis is a full blown paranoid break with reality and no statistical understanding.
ITG
“Now, as for your obsession with HADCRUT data “secrecy”. You have one of two motives. Either you’re interested in finding out the likely spatio-temporal patterns of the instrumental record, in which case you could turn to the GISSTEMP or NCDC data/analyses (and check them against HADCRUT if you want, like Jim Hansen has just done), OR you’re interested in trying to paint a picture of complicity between CRU and the IPCC, in order to cast doubt on the whole notion that GHGs have warmed the planet over the last 130 years. Or is there maybe a third option that I’ve missed?”
Wrong. I believe that GHGs have warmed the planet and will continue to warm the planet if we do not change our policies. I am on the record saying this for a long ass time. Like I said I worked with Modtran and Hitran Source code and had to actually operate the models as a part of my job. I do not believe there is any complicity between CRU and the IPCC.
WRT the GTI ( global temp index). It seems clear from the literature that
HADCRU is accepted as the defacto standard. So I start there.
1. They claim a UHI contamination of .05C-.1C per century. they do not
REMOVE this effect. They expand the error bands. I believe this is not
the best approach, especially if one is trying to reconstruct the past
based on correlation with the present.
2. based on Mickittrick papers I believe UHI contamination to be greater
than .05C century. Perhaps as much as .3C ( over land of course)
3. My principles ( based on my past affliation with Open source) demand
Open source and Open data.
4. My Politics demand transparency.
5. My philosophy of science demands it ( ya ya philosophy major)
6. I love numbers and data analysis.
7. I like to see for myself.
“And yes I know why HADCRUT is cooler than GISSTEMP. As to your whole argument about the possible differences in the 3 data sets, have you read Jim Hansen’t recent analysis comparing GISSTEMP with HADCRUT? (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/20100115_Temperature2009.pdf) How can you explain their identity if they are not based on the same essential data and methods?”
Yup read that. Problem. Its not science. i see charts and graphs.
No data; no code = no science. I dont see why you dont get this.
let me make it brutally simple. ITS WORDS ON A PAGE. its an advertisement
for an analysis. As a former data analyst, I would have been fired for not
producing a reproducible piece of work. TurnKey. Beyond THAT
I’m not interested in explaining their identity. If I was I would NOT merely look at a paper. I would get the data and code for both and do an in depth analysis. For example, GISS has some really odd ways of building a reference stations. Nightlights is a mess. ROW urban adjustments are a mess. In Hadcru the handling of land/sea grids is messed up ( hint you have to read the documents in the documents folder to see the proposal to fix this. ) Further, I would fully expect there to be large agreement between the two. That Still leaves my question which you dont want to answer.
1. Which is the BEST ( why have more than one)
2. IS UHI properly accounted for ( I think not, GISS adjusts for it, CRU do not )
3. next step.. GHCN audit. for example GHCN is adjusted data ( at least in the us) Those adjustments, tobs,flinet,shap, etc have to be audited. Further
adjusting is really not the best approach statistically. Finally if you do adjust you have to carry the error forward. GHCN dont.
next.
Oh I numbered points so you can actually respond to what I say rather than try the tangent man approach. Ritilan works, try it. focus.
Inspector Thompson’s Gazelle (23:21:33) :
You’ve got a couple problems.
Nobody said tree-rings don’t respond to temperature, and certainly David Ball did not say so. He said, specifically, that tree-rings are a poor indicator of temperature. Why? There are several reasons, but most importantly, they respond in a non-linear fashion to temperature, a non-linearity that is a function of other input variables, i.e., the inputs are correlated. One of these inputs is CO2 which has a cause-effect relationship to temperature by hypothesis.
Uh, his father is Dr. Tim Ball, someone that made a career out of studying the weather and climate.
In other words “I can’t refute what was shown therefore I’ll simply say something snarky and thus I win!” Silly.
Really? What are these methods? Disentangling correlated inputs that effect a system in a non-linear manner is a seriously difficult problem to solve. All of the techniques we have seen used to reconstruct past temperatures are linear and require uncorrelated signals. If you have some magic sauce that has been hidden from the rest of us, you should publish. Otherwise, I would suggest that you not make claims regarding things you clearly do not understand.
Indeed. That last one you told was a whopper.
You have, at best, demonstrated that you don’t understand the issues David Ball is discussing.
Wow. So you’re actually doing field work and you did not realize the non-linear response problem? Or that every method (to date) used to extract “signals” requires uncorrelated inputs? That’s… sad.
I suggest you come up with better answers for the questions. I’m guessing that you are some sort of student, so maybe you really don’t understand the problems yet. The basics of why non-linearity and correlated sources are a problem can be found in any introductory text on component analysis. You might need some prep coursework in random variables, however, since that sets the stage for the basic statistical properties of the matrices that are being manipulated via these linear extraction methods. Furthermore, a class in linear algebra would be useful as well.
Mark
You’re very selective on this blog. You show a graph of artic temperatures on from the Centre for Ocean and Ice the right hand side there- would you like to see their graph of sea ice coverage?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php