Readers may recall when I pointed out a sensor failure that caused NSIDC’s Arctic ice graph to go haywire. In a similar vein, this essay below appeared as part of a comment on WUWT from reader “Kate”. I have been asked to carry this story before, and I refused. Now that I see it being used to back up arguments, I think it is time to point out how wrong it is. My comments follow after the end of the essay.
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Satellite Data Fraud
Dr Charles R. Anderson; āIt is now perfectly clear that there are no reliable worldwide temperature records, and that we have little more than anecdotal information on the temperature history of the Earth.ā
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Leading US Physicist Labels Satellitegate Scandal āA Catastropheā.
Respected American physicist, Dr Charles R. Anderson has waded into the escalating Satellitegate controversy publishing a damning analysis on his blog.
In a fresh week of revelations when NOAA calls in their lawyers to handle the fallout, Anderson adds further fuel to the fire and fumes against NOAA, one of the four agencies charged with responsibility for collating global climate temperatures. NOAA is now fighting a rearguard legal defense to hold onto some semblance of credibility with growing evidence of systemic global warming data flaws by government climatologists.
Anderson, a successful Materials Physicist with his own laboratory, has looked closely at the evidence uncovered on NOAA. He has been astonished to discover, āBoth higher altitudes and higher latitudes have been systematically removed from the measured temperature record with very poor and biased interpolated results taking their place.ā
Like other esteemed scientists, Anderson has been quick to spot sinister flaws in official temperatures across northern Lake Michigan
The website operated by the Michigan State University published ridiculously high surface water temperatures widely distributed over the lake many indicating super-boiling conditions. The fear is that these anomalies have been fed across the entire satellite dataset. The satellite that first ignited the fury is NOAA-16. But as we have since learned there are now five key satellites that have become either degraded or seriously comprised.
In his post, āSatellite Temperature Record Now Unreliableā
http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2010/08/satellite-temperature-record-now.html
Andersonās findings are that NOAA sought to cover up the āsensor degradationā on their satellite, NOAA-16. The U.S. physicist agrees there may now be thousands of temperatures in the range of 415-604 degrees Fahrenheit automatically fed into computer climate models and contaminating climate models with a substantial warming bias. This may have gone on for a far longer period than the five years originally identified.
Anderson continues, āOne has to marvel at either the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is laid open before us.ā
The Indian Government Knew of Faults in 2004
The Indian government was long ago onto these faults, too. Researcher, Devendra Singh, tried and failed to draw attention to the increasing problems with the satellite as early as 2004 but his paper remained largely ignored outside of his native homeland.
Indian scientist, Singh reported that NOAA-16 started malfunctioning due to a scan motor problem that caused a ābarcodeā appearance. Singhās paper, āPerformance of the NOAA-16 and AIRS temperature soundings over Indiaā exposed the satelliteās growing faults and identified three key errors that needed to be addressed.
Singh writes, āThe first one is the instrument observation error. The second is caused by the differences in the observation time and location between the satellite and radiosonde. The third is sampling error due to atmospheric horizontal inhomogeneity of the field of view (FOV).ā These from India thus endorse Dr. Andersonās findings.
NOAA Proven to have engaged in Long-term Cover Up
Investigations are proving increasingly that such data was flagged by non-NOAA agencies years ago, but NOAA declined to publish notice of the faults until the problem was publicized loudly and widely in the first āSatellitegateā article, āUS Government in Massive New Global Warming Scandal ā NOAA Disgraced.ā
Official explanations initially dismissed the findings, but then NOAA conceded their accuracy in the face of the evidence.
A succession of record warm temperatures in recent years may be based on contaminated satellite readings.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/16/noaa-warmest-january-on-record-in-both-satellite-records/
But NOAA spokesman, Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis declined to clarify the extent of the satellite instrument problem or how long the fault might have gone undetected.
In another article, āOfficial: Satellite Failure Means Decade of Global Warming Data Doubtfulā
we saw the smoking gun evidence of a cover up after examining the offending satelliteās AVHRR Subsystem Summary. The official summary shows no report of any āsensor degradationā (NOAAās admission) since its launch in September 2000.
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poesstatus/componentStatusSummary.asp?spacecraft=16&subsystem=4
Subsystem Summary Details Censored Between 2005-10
But even more sinister is the fact that the official online summary now only shows events recorded up to 2005. All subsequent notations, that was on NOAAās web pages showed entries inclusive to summer 2010 which have now been removed. However, climatechangefraud.com is displaying a sample of the missing evidence copied before NOAA took down the revealing web pages after it entered into ādamage limitationā mode.
http://climatechangedispatch.com/images/stories/pics3/2010_Jul04_959EDT.gif
As events have unfolded we are also learning that major systemic failures in the rest of the satellite global data-collecting network were also not reported. Such serious flaws affect up to five U.S satellites as reported in an excellent article by Susan Bohan.
NOAA Tears Up its Own āData Transparencyā Policy
But rather than come clean, NOAA has ordered their lawyers to circle the wagons. Glenn Tallia, their Senior Counselor, wrote āThe data and associated website at issue are not NOAAās but instead are those of the Michigan State Sea Grant program. Thus, we have referred your email to the Michigan State Sea Grant program.ā
Yes, Glenn, clearly the final data output was published by Michigan but the underlying fault is with your satellite!
With NOAA now hiding behind their attorneys we appear to see a contradiction of NOAAās official pledge that ā The basic tenet of physical climate data management at NOAA is full and open data accessā published in their document, āNOAA/National Climatic Data Center Open Access to Physical Climate Data Policy December 2009ā³.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/open-access-climate-data-policy.pdf
Sadly, we may now be at the start of yet another protracted delay and concealment process that tarnished NASAās and CRUās reputations in Climategate. We saw in that scandal that for 3-7 years the US and the UK government agencies cynically and unlawfully stymied Freedom of Information requests (FOIA).
NASAās disgrace was affirmed in March 2010 when they finally conceded that their data was in worse shape than the much-maligned Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the UKās University of East Anglia. CRUās Professor Phil Jones only escaped criminal prosecution by way of a technicality.
The attorney credited with successfully forcing NASA to come clean was Christopher Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
American Physicist Pick Out Key Issues
Meanwhile, back on his blog, Anderson points to the key issues that NOAA tries to cover up. He refers to how Charles Pistis, Program Coordinator of the Michigan Sea Grant project, tried to pass off the flawed data as being an accidental product of the satelliteās malfunction sensors taking readings off the top of clouds rather than the surface temperatures.
By contrast, Anderson cogently refutes this explanation showing that such bogus data was consistently of very high temperatures not associated with those detected from cloud tops. He advises it is fair to assume that NOAA were using this temperature anomaly to favorably hype a doom-saying agenda of ever-increasing temperatures that served the misinformation process of government propaganda.
As Pistis admitted, all such satellite data is fed automatically into records and apparently as long as it showed high enough temperatures to satisfy the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocates of those numbers were not going to make careful scrutiny for at least half a decade.
Anderson bemoans, āOne has to marvel at either the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is laid open before us. Charles Pistis has evaded the repeated question of whether the temperature measurement data from such satellites has gone into the NOAA temperature record. This sure suggests this is an awkward question to answer.ā
Now Satellites NOAA-17 and 18 Suffer Calamities
While NOAAās Nero fiddles āRomeā continues to burn, and the satellite network just keeps on falling apart. After NOAA-16 bit the dust last NOAA-17 became rated āpoorā due to āscan motor degradationā while NOAA-18ā²s gyroās are regarded by many now as good as dead. However, these satellites that each cross the US twice per day at twelve-hour intervals are still giving ādirect readoutā(HRPT or APT) or central processing to customers. So please, NOAA, tell us ā is this GIGO still being fed into official climate models?
http://www.ofcm.gov/slso/2008/NSLSOP_Draft_V6.pdf
NOAA-17 appears in even worse condition. On February 12 and 19 2010, NOAA-17 concedes it has āAVHRR Scan Motor Degradationā with āProduct(s) or Data Impacted.ā
Beleaguered NOAA customers have been told, ādirect readout users are going to have to deal with the missing data gaps as best they can.ā
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SATS/SPBULL/MSG0502024.01.txt
On August 9 2010, NOAA 17 was listed as on āpoorā with scan motor problems and rising motor currents. NOAA admits, āConstant rephase by the MIRP was causing data dropouts on all the HRPT stream and APT and GAC derivatives. Auto re-phase has now been disabled and the resulting AVHRR products are almost all unusable.ā
NOAA continues with tests on ā17ā² with a view to finding a solution. On page 53 we find that NOAA-17 has an inoperable AMSU Instrument.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/weather-satellite-reports/message/2352
The status for August 17, 2010 was RED (not operational) and NOAA is undertaking āurgent gyro tests on NOAA 18.ā
More evidence proving NOAA is running a ādegradingā satellite network can be read here.
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poesstatus/spacecraftStatusSummary.asp?spacecraft=15
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Anthony: This entire episode got started much like mine – pointing out a problem to NSIDC. Here is the genesis of it, faulty water surface temperatures over Lake Michigan:
This analysis by Dr. Anderson, saying things like āfavorably hype a doom-saying agendaā is ridiculous. Thereās no cover up. This sensor degradation and failure is normal for the technology. Yes, the temperatures were off, the sensor failed. It happened to NSIDC also.
The only thing that can be said here is that they werenāt watching the output of automated SST product closely enough, which was the same issue with NSIDC when I found them (unknowingly) plotting faulty satellite sounder data. NOAA19 is now online and 100% for the AMSU channels, and many automated sea/ice products are moving to that. If you look at the spacecraft status page:
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poesstatus/spacecraftStatusSummary.asp?spacecraft=14
Youāll see this spacecraft was taken offline, after running for 12 yearsā¦and as you go through the spacecraft numbers, NOAA 15, 16, 17, 18, through NOAA 19 youāll see they get progressively better, with NOAA 19 being fully operational, except for a caveat on the humidity sounder for channel H3.
Dr. Anderson The article says: “While NOAAās Nero fiddles āRomeā continues to burn, and the satellite network just keeps on falling apart.”
Technology fails with age. Itās normal. Just like an automobile losing a battery after 3 years, or needing a new water pump, spacecraft also have failures. Unlike your car, sometimes redundant sensors and systems keep its mission going. Also unlike a car, you just canāt bring it into the shop and ask them to swap in a new AMSU unit in an afternoon.
Despite many requests to carry this story on WUWT, I refused to, because itās wrongly presented with the cover up angle. There is no fraud here, only simple and expected technological failure compounded by people not catching data errors soon enough.
Quality control is the issue, and yes, there has been a lot sloppy quality control lately at NOAA. For example, see my essay on Nuuk, Greenland and surface temperature.
Further, this data isn’t used in any global temperature calculations that I am aware of, as both UAH and RSS global satellite temperature data sets use different data from different sensors and platforms.
UAH in fact uses a completely different satellite, dubbed AQUA.
Thus the claim ofĀ “Official: Satellite Failure Means Decade of Global Warming Data Doubtfulā is simply false, especially since the well respected UAH global temperature anomaly satellite data set doesn’t even use this satellite.
This sort or essay by the “CO2 insanity” blog on Dr. Anderson does nothing to advance the cause of climate skepticism presented as it is. I suggest ignoring it (the fraud issue), and for skeptical websites carrying it, I suggest you either place a caveat on your posts or delete it. Focus on the quality control issues, get them fixed, then we can have useful arguments over the results of the data. ā Anthony
With due respect, though, the issue here is not the sensor failure, but rather the failure of the responsible institution to perform at least a modicum of quality control before releasing the data.
That same lack of care, or self discipline, is manifest in the data pilloried by your Surface Station project.
Clearly very little has changed since you started that effort.
REPLY: And I allude to the QC issue in my text. On this we agree. I just think the issue is presented in an over the top manner – Anthony
“either degraded or seriously comprised.”
Compromised ?
Like I am the typo Palice [lol] LOL
Good job Anthony, we can fight with truth not ,rotten tomatoes and cabbages…
Minor points of order. The Michigan Sea Grant Program is jointly administered by both Michigan State University and the University of Michigan. http://www.miseagrant.umich.edu/about/index.html
The Coastwatch webpage now carries a bold warning in red text on their main webpage that reads:
http://coastwatch.msu.edu/
“NOTICE (8/11/2010): Due to degradation of a satellite sensor used by this mapping product, some images have exhibited extreme high and low surface temperatures. Please disregard these images as anomalies. Future images will not include data from the degraded satellite and images caused by the faulty satellite sensor will be/have been removed from the image archive.”
Kudos to you Anthony for being even handed. It belies the claims of some that WUWT is an attack dog for the anti-AGW movement, and shows the justification for being the number 1 science blog.
Anthony, Are you saying that this no likelyhood that the global temp data set has been polluted as a result of the lack of QA at NOAA? Aye, Bob.
REPLY: No, but I am saying the that the failure of sensors on NOAA-16 and 17 has nothing to do with the global data set UAH and RSS, who use AQUA.
Checking on NOAA’s QC procedures is something we should always do. But never assume malice where simple incompetence will do. – Anthony
I’ve always found that the more the public pounds on a real problem, like quality, a problem that can be illustrated and understood, the more those in power are likely to listen. But if people persist in imagining there are problems or conspiracies or frauds where there are not, then the legit points get lost. Good call here Anthony. the noise of bad arguments drives the good arguments out of the room.
Right on Anthony Watts. Data quality is the most important issue. Data quality problems have been and probably will always be a frustration in any empirical science. It is all to easy to get sidetracked. Unfounded or questionable accusations are not useful in science or in public discourse. Dr. Anderson and others are free to express their opinions to anyone willing to listen. It is the listener’s choice to hear or not.
These near-real time products from the NOAA polar orbiters were never advertised to be climate-monitoring quality. NOAA instruments were designed for weather monitoring, and those of us who use them for climate do so at our own risk.
Everyone who works in the field knows that the data have a variety of problems…seldom do we ever get a satellite instrument that is fully functional, without some sort of calibration issue.
I would wager that the quality flags automatically generated by the AMSU in question would have made it clear that the bad data should NOT have been used to retrieve SSTs. It is the responsibility of the data user to determine whether the data are of sufficient quality for their purpose, using both data quality checks, and the quality flag values, before they generate SSTs from them.
The only other option is for NOAA (or NASA) to CENSOR some of the data…which none of us wants! We want to see the raw stuff, with all the warts…and as soon as we can get our hands on it!
We fought NASA for that right back in the 1980s, arguing that the scientific community should not have to wait until a handful of government employees decides their data adjustments are the final say.
This whole conspiratorial article fiasco has been a step backward, in my view. Thanks to Anthony for speaking out on it!
I live up in the area shown and I assure you it was not this warm. š
Although it is clear that conspiracies clearly do exist (after all a major part of what the CIA does could accurately be described as conspiring), I find most conspiracy theories fall down because often it is cock-up, rather than conspiracy.
Anthony,
It is not always what a person or persons do. What is important is what they say/do when their errors are brought to them. If they circle the wagon, It is reasonable to assume there is more fire behind that smoke. Yes, there is a lot of data, and not enough clock cycles in person’s life to deal with it, and the paid employees have personal life too. but acknowledging the error is the only way it can be honestly rectified. 5 years after devendra singh, there has been no response.
another thing that relates to india. not directly related to this NOAA issue. in the last 63 years, indian metros have become huge, and their airports have grown more than even our own ( USA ) airports. population around the airports have grown enormously. lot more than the population and energy usage growth of india itself. but we are still picking up the temp data from those airports, and use them as representative of indian subcontinent’s temperature. That can’t be anywhere near acceptable
Steven Mosher,
“But if people persist in imagining there are problems or conspiracies or frauds where there are not, then the legit points get lost.”
I agree with you up to a point but feel you ignore the fact that in large bureaucracies, and this is what these government departments are, there exists, perhaps not ‘groupthink’ but at all times a ‘prevailing wind’ which conditions how
the organisation reports and responds. This prevailing wind is generally strong enough to subsume the science. It is therefore no wonder that people begin to see conspiracies.
Anthony and all others:
The UAH and RSS data sets use a different sensor as Anthony has pointed out, however that sensor on NOAA 16 also failed years ago and caused spurios readings back in 2005. Dr. Christy found the problem back then and UAH stopped using NOAA 16 data in Dec 2006 and removed all NOAA 16 data from Oct 2005 up to Dec 2006 from their dataset. RSS followed shortly their after. You can see what UAH did at this link :
ftp://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/pub/data/msu/t2lt/readme.13Apr2010
RSS can be seen here:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html
The problem with the whole thing is not that NOAA was trying to “boost” temps it was that they knew NOAA 16’s AVHRR was in permanent Yellow status since 2005 and they were still using it to do automatic dumps into a database, instead of using the at time new NOAA 18 (which had a good AVHRR at the time, this scan motor problem has plagued all AVHRR sensors on all the sats over time) and then over to NOAA 19:
http://www.oso.noaa.gov/poesstatus/componentStatusSummary.asp?spacecraft=16&subsystem=4
That was the last entry for NOAA 16 and 5 years on that scan motor is still in yellow condition, never back to green status and it was used in 2010 for the Coastwatch program. Did they do that to “cook” the numbers, I highly doubt it, does it help show a pattern of incompetence? Yep. How else do you explain using a known bad sensor 5 years later in a program open to the public, while you had two new satellites in green at the time?
Re: never assume malice where simple incompetence will do.
Malice would have had them raising hundreds of readings a degree, not a few readings hundreds of degrees. It seems most likely to me that this was a glitch that didn’t get caught. When outsiders found it, they thought they could smooth over the problem quietly to avoid giving the skeptics another angle of attack. CYA.
Anthony
If there is nothing to hide,why call in the lawyers?Lawyers don’t get called in just because of a degrading satellite,not suggesting conspiracy or any such, but it just does’nt seem right to go to that length for equipment failure!!!
REPLY: The lawyer may be a reaction to initial over reaction. But, I don’t know the full story. I agree with the lawyer’s response though, the QC failure was at UM also, had they noticed, it would have traveled up the food technical food chain. – Anthony
Why do they use the term “interpolate” (which is the method of obtaining a value between data points), when the process they evidently used to come up with boiling lake water temperatures is “extrapolate” (the method of obtaining a value BEYOND data points by projecting an unsustainable trend)?
“But never assume malice where simple incompetence will do.”
Why prefer incompetence over malice as the cause? Does the evidence demonstrate it? I mean, we humans have overcrowded prisons, a unbroken history of criminalty, and personal experience with chicanery of all kinds. We observe means, motive and opportunity here. Is there something we are missing?
Andrew
Anthony says: “….people not catching data errors soon enough.”
Some are hard to miss & others require teasing out, the latter being what you and others have so ably demonstrated are somewhat more important to accomplish.
Why bring in lawyers for failure of a satellite, somethings not adding up here??
Anthony, You are pretty much correct in that these satellites age and their data begins to show errors and biases. I work on the control center systems for NASA/NOAA satellites and they spend a lot of money processing telemetry to not only detect failures, but predict them before they get serious. Everyone should hesitate on crying ‘cover up’ when satellites age as they all do.
I got about a quarter of the way through this screed and had to stop. I can only take so much spin before I get dizzy, even if it is in the direction I am already spinning in. Sheesh!
Don’t attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by selection bias.
BTW, a major part of one of my jobs was qualifying IC devices for NASA satellites. 12 years for a measurement instrument, getting temp cycled daily and blasted by the solar wind, to survive, is quite a feat.
[Reply – if you actually read it properly, the whole point of this post is to say that calling it a conspiracy is just plain wrong ~jove, mod]
Knowing that Dr. Anderson has carefully examined the physics behind the hoax of the Greenhouse gas effect, and commented on it in a very technical manner, to tell others to ignore his comments shows your own concern to cover your As* with your own, weather /temperature records. The fact that your data has shown that there has not been an atmospheric temperature increase, and is your bases for being aā skeptic” does not provide a reason to defend whatās is obviously gross malfeasances on the part of NOAA and the University of Michigan. It is time to let the chips fall where they may because there has been to much covering up of facts by CRU, NOAA, NASA, Judy Curry, and an endless list of Universities just to be sure that the āfree government cheeseā keeps coming.
Mann-made global warming is a hoax, fairy-tale, lies, Mother Goose rhymes etc. The Trillions of dollars, EUās, Pasos, that have gone down the rat holes of fraudulent research because “bad scientists” have not been prosecuted for there crimes is more than criminal, it is a crime against humanity. This money could have been used for many useful and beneficial projects.
REPLY: CYA? Well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. – Anthony
[Reply – if you actually read it properly, the whole point of this post is to say that calling it a conspiracy is just plain wrong ~jove, mod]
I think I might have done a poor job of stating what I was trying to say. Communicating is kind of difficult for me. I was in agreement with what Anthony was saying in this post. I was just stating my twist on the “malice” saying. What I had difficulty reading was the original article that was the subject of the post. E.g.
“In a fresh week of revelations when NOAA calls in their lawyers to handle the fallout, Anderson adds further fuel to the fire and fumes against NOAA, one of the four agencies charged with responsibility for collating global climate temperatures. NOAA is now fighting a rearguard legal defense to hold onto some semblance of credibility with growing evidence of systemic global warming data flaws by government climatologists.”
Wow!
1. Why does any error (“error”) always (without exception) favour the Warmists case?
2. Why is any error (“error”) only acknowledged(reluctantly)/corrected(even more reluctantly) when we (you, and all like-minded individuals) discover it?
Doesn’t NOAA suck about $4 Billion annually out of the US Treasury?
That is some value for money.
@ Roy Spencer : October 4, 2010 at 12:57 pm
Roy, I don’t think most want to jump on some conspiracy bandwagon but I do appreciate Anthony for bringing this aspect to the forefront so everyone realizes that these issues do exist and need to be watched for and realized when they are using satellite data or looking graphs and plots made with this data. So many just assume satellite data is flawless and unquestionable which is really never the case as you said above. However people, it is usually some of the better data that we have available, so we live with it but with a wary eye.
I do believe that the common specifications of the instruments, such as absolute accuracy, precision, and repeatability, should be included in a note below displayed satellite data so everyone knows what possible error ranges exist as they use or view this data, or at least point to a link that holds those specifications.
But never assume malice where simple incompetence will do. Why?
I say, never assume simple incompetence where even circumstantial evidence points to some form of malice or at least a hidden agenda. What āevidenceā? Period of time the problem continued without public acknowledgement or correction until some āoutsideā entity identified it. Once identified, minimized or outright dismissed as false. Than when factually proven, the responsibility thereof deflected to someone else. I could go on but – – how can one write it off to āincompetenceā when they are so VERY competent, at least to this point, at covering their butts? ā¦and saving their jobs? ā¦and their funding?
And isnāt that where the REAL problem is? Saying (and thereby letting them off the hook of responsibility) itās āsimple incompetenceā leads to more simple incompetenceā¦ā¦or more malice. And not a one of us can say with more or less certainty than someone else which it is. But have we not reached the point of āenough is enoughā? Is it any wonder why the general public has so little faith in ANYTHING āgovernmentā says or does, OR āscientistsā say or do when we just write off their failures to āsimple incompetenceā and no ever gets firedā¦ or thrown in jail?
Doc, your right to point to what we believe to be reliable data from other sources that should give us reasonable faith in the temp. data, but to excuse even the FAILURE TO DECTECT A PROBLEM of such a serious nature, much less ignore it or cover it up for any reason, then becomes āincompetenceā (or malice) on someone’s part… maybe ours.
Rationalist
October 4, 2010 at 1:56 pm
“1. Why does any error (āerrorā) always (without exception) favour the Warmists case?
2. Why is any error (āerrorā) only acknowledged(reluctantly)/corrected(even more reluctantly) when we (you, and all like-minded individuals) discover it?”
#
I think it can be attributed to selection bias.
It’s certainly human nature to be less likely to double check work if they’re seeing what they want to or expect to see. Then, that’s why science demands repeatability in experiments and skeptical inquiry. On top of that, the system sometimes sets itself up for the convergence of self interest. No conspiracy necessary even though possible.
Although when sloppy work gets pointed out, can’t you rightly call the circling of the wagons “conspiracy” to hide the truth?
The lesson to learn here is open and truthful communications. The thing that is killing climate science today is the hiding of data and methodology from plain view. By allowing others access to your work ,others can catch mistakes like this more quickly and the loss of credible science work can be minimized. While problems with method can be checked as well. No one likes to waste their time.
Unfortunately, the IPCC, EAU, MET, NOAA, NASA and their scholarly people who are intent on circular peer review and agenda driven science will continue to destroy what could be a huge achievement in our time.
Very good post Anthony!! Goes right to the heart of the problem…
The fault with the conspiracy theory lays solely at the feet of NOAA. Agencies, especially govt. agencies should be keenly aware of even the appearance of impropriety. Lawyer up? If they would just put their big boy spidey man underroos on and admit to general incompetence, we can correct and move on. I mean, really, it is a governmental agency, its not like we expect much of anything from them anyway.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, work for the government. BTW, because it is a governmental agency, climate skepticism or not, many will believe conspiracy. It just goes with the territory. I guess some simply can’t believe that our government is really that incompetent. Poor misguided deluded saps.
Agree Anthony.
The problem is QC , vital to a private company providing a paid for information service
with financial consequences but non-existent in comfortable government funded agencies.
Thanks for this, Anthony. I wondered why you hadn’t covered this story. It’s hard to assess this kind of thing from the ‘outside’, so we are depending on your integrity and judgment. It’s good to know both are fully engaged.
My take is that failure to recognize the errors trending upward is a combination of incompetence in reviewing the output data combined with no single person being charged with the responsibility to manage the output. I have tried many times to teach people how to use the red flag method of reviewing reports, to not much avail. This ability has nothing to do with intelligence but rather a strong willingness to do the work necessary to find the red flags and chase down the answers to see if the data is proper or not.
I promulgated a theorem in 1965 when I was project manager on a large job. It was a penalty-bonus job and I had to review a minimum of four D sized drawings per day. I carefully looked a drawing and used all of the knowledge that I had to see if I could spot anything that needed to be there but wasn’t there. I then looked at what was there to see if I could spot anything that didn’t look right. I found some of both types of problems on almost every drawing.
I had a colleague doing a similar job. He did not look at any of the drawings but simply signed them. I asked him why he didn’t review the drawings and he said, “These drawing have 300 to 400 man-hours in them. What can I add to that effort? I told him that he knew more about the intent of each drawing plus knowledge of how each piece tied together than any of the person who did the 300 to 400 hours of work. He said I don’t have the ability to find anything.
After reflecting, I thought how I did and concluded I used red flags, “If something doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t right.” To find a red flag, you must first look and then work to see if there is anything omitted or simply wrong. I have watched Hansen et al miss many simple mistakes in numbers, for some reason seemingly always on the high side. I suspect this is because they believe that temperature numbers will always go up.
I don’t have any grand ideas on how to force the mostly bureaucrats and college students who handle climate data to “first look and then work”. Steve McIntyre has kicked Hansen’s butt several times yet he continues to do a poor job of reviewing his output. Anthony has kicked several people’s butt as have others on WUWT. I propose the answer is that the person’s doing the work must want to do a good job and then expend the time necessary to do a good job. The problem is how to entice them to want to do a good job and perhaps to be even handed.
Dr T G Watkins says:
October 4, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Agree Anthony.
The problem is QC , vital to a private company providing a paid for information service with financial consequences but non-existent in comfortable government funded agencies.
The NOAA-17 satellite was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co., Sunnyvale, Calif. do you think that they should be subject to financial consequences for the lack of quality control in the satellite they built? Of course it was launched in 2002.
The higher the temperatures the bigger the Alms for the Global Warming Church š
Sparty (Michigan State University in East Lansing MI) has taken another public hit because of the Wolverine (University of Michigan in Ann Arbor MI) not doing their required quality data assurance. I do agree that the Great Lakes are not boiling off although evaportion is responsible for 95% of water loss. I personally keep tract of weather buoy # 45003 in Northern Lake Huron and # 45008 in Southern Lake Huron (Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are connected at the Straits of Mackinac) to know what the water temperatures are instead of relying upon satellite reports. Raw data is so much more convincing than an Ann Arbor Coffee House expert’s ruminations. Go Green.
Fair enough Anthony but do we have full access to all the raw satellite data that UAH and RSS are using and can we be confident in the accuracy of the data being used given the issues that have arisen with some of the satellites no longer in use by those data sets.
Amen, brother!
Consistent bias = malice?
I agree that intentional fraud is very unlikely.
Why, oh Why, cannot these scientists admit that they have made an error and come clean? Unfortunately bureaucratics are always right and therefore everybody else is wrong and in the bureaucratic universe mistakes are always someone else’s fault.
If you remember the Challenger Space Shuttle that exploded shortly after take off, the subsequent enquiry revealed complacency, some poor engineering and groupthink. It took a disaster to establish the Challenger enquiry, what will it take for an enquiry to establish the truth in this situation? In the face of extreme bureaucratic embarassment, I guess that Congress may, post November, enquire more deeply into the climate change issue. I would predict that the truth will be dragged from a squealing bureaucracy when the honourable course would be for the director of NOAA to simply say that this is an error, a serious error, and that the issue will be investigated by impartial outsiders.
Roman generals admitted failure by falling on their swords – if only our bureacrats could follow this classical tradition (figuratively speaking!).
Whether it was ‘incompetence’ or ‘malice’ the fact is that incorrect data was allowed to enter the database. This once again casts doubt on climate science, and the reliability of the various global climate-metric data-sets. It is now becoming obvious that because of this revelation (and the problems previously identified with the surface station data) that we simply don’t know what is happening to our climate. We as tax payers have spent all this money on a product which is unfit for purpose.
I suspect that is why the lawyers have been invoked, as it buys them some time to dig themselves out of the hole. No need for a conspiracy theory to explain the observed panic, Satellitegate is a political hot potato which could cost people their jobs.
Rationalist says:
October 4, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Consistent bias = malice?
=========================================================
If it has been repeatedly pointed out, then, yes.
Porter Clarke’s Law: Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
(It is a play on Arthur C. Clarke’s Law “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”)
In my life time we have gone from my listening, fascinated, to the re-broadcast bleeps coming from the first Sputnik to reading the conspiratorial whinges of those who cannot appreciate that a piece of machinery operating in the most hostile environment imaginable has suffered a glitch. We have come to accept the almost miraculous as common-place.
Too many people expect perfection in machinery and electrical circuitry; it does not exist, especially when it is operating in the hostility of Space. That the instruments operated at all should be the subject of celebration; the failure of the instrumentation should not be the cause of such calumny.
The instruments fed into an automated system, the instruments failed, the automated system continued to accept data patently incorrect. The automated system could not discern this and continued to report as it had been programmed to.
There is no conspiracy. There is only a simple equipment failure combined with a lack of human supervision.
Anthony is most gracious in his acceptance of this situation; much more could be attributed to the incorrect readings, but he has accepted the simplest of scenarios. Something broke and it took a while to find out about it.
I can’t fault a bunch of college kids for not practicing the principle of input validation. Many big banks still get this wrong with their web sites, which leads to cross site scripting attacks and SQL injection issues.
I do fault NOAA for not properly over-seeing this project though and I wonder how many NOAA projects also might suffer from this same or similar oversight(s)?
Trust, but verify. I heard a very wise man say that on TV long ago…
Anthony, I went along with your train of thought … until I started thinking about the way this had apparently been reported several times. News media don’t spontaneous start looking at statistics, they get tipped off by someone “in the know”. Then They check their sources
1. It’s inconceivable that this story of the warming lakes was being reported without NOAA being made aware – even if it was a third party, someone in the media is going to have checked back with NOAA.
2. It’s inconceivable that a scientific institution let this story “get wings” without checking for simple instrument error.
There’s more to this that “quality control”. This has all the hallmarks of the “tail wagging the dog” …. good PR taking precedence over basic scientific checks of the data.
It really seems that someone has cynically used the increased temperature as a PR tool with absolutely no concern for the data integrity. THAT IS SCIENTIFIC FRAUD
Fudd’s Law of Bureaucracies: “If you push a bureaucracy hard enough it will fall over.”
Fuddās Law applied /translated to the NOAA’s known general data handling problems: If you point out NOAA’s data problems often enough they will outsource the data handling. QA/QC problem solved.
There are many corollaries to Fuddās Law of Bureaucracies. Can you guess them?
John
Stephen Brown says:
October 4, 2010 at 4:02 pm
“In my life time we have gone from my listening, fascinated, to the re-broadcast bleeps coming from the first Sputnik to reading the conspiratorial whinges of those who cannot appreciate that a piece of machinery operating in the most hostile environment imaginable has suffered a glitch. …….”
========================================================
Yep, in my lifetime, too. That said, the reason for the expectations are the dolts unwilling to announce the failures of technology. Personally, I don’t have a problem with technological limitations or failures. I have a problem with people unwilling to state, “We know there’s a problem with the data and it shouldn’t be viewed as gospel.”
I don’t believe it is beyond the pale to shout conspiracy when they do, in fact, conspire to keep this information from the public. Anything short of an open and honest admittance of the failures and limitations of our data collecting abilities, in congruence and knowledge with other people engaged in the same endeavors, does, in fact, create a conspiracy. To help people with the “conspire” word……there are several definitions. One of them……”to combine or work together for any purpose or effect.”……..usually, it is viewed that it be done in secrecy. The actions of NOAA do rise to this definition. Does it rise to a punitive legal action? Probably not. Was there one or more people in agreement to seek out an attorney and withhold information from the public? Apparently so.
UAH in fact uses a completely different satellite, dubbed AQUA.
Thus the claim of āOfficial: Satellite Failure Means Decade of Global Warming Data Doubtfulā is simply false, especially since the well respected UAH global temperature anomaly satellite data set doesnāt even use this satellite.
Perhaps this article reads a little like a rumor. But the template for spotting problems still may be useful.
When was AQUA launched? 2002
“Satellite designers built Aqua to function on orbit for a minimum of six years.”
1. Have any systems failures or systems degradation been reported on AQUA yet?
2. Is the satellite data is fed automatically into records?
3. Are there any upper parameters set so that 200 degree readings get automatically kicked back? Are there any lower parameters that automatically get flagged?
“UAH in fact uses a completely different satellite, dubbed AQUA.
Thus the claim of āOfficial: Satellite Failure Means Decade of Global Warming Data Doubtfulā is simply false, especially since the well respected UAH global temperature anomaly satellite data set doesnāt even use this satellite.”
UAH apparently relies on data from other sources, however. AQUA has not been around for a decade.
The following will seem far O/T but I do have a point:
I recently discovered that many medical labs doing life and death tests and procedures like histology slide staining here in Canada have little if any manditory quality control standards (like simply running controls with your tests) and voluntarily doing Q.C. work that results in extra costs to the system by exposing poor practices can get you transferred to a different part of the lab. This can make a host of different test results run little better than chance. There have actually been scandals and deaths caused by all of this but the real lessons were lost by finger pointing festivals and peeing contests. The media interest only went as far as the emotional aspect of the problem – not the blindingly obvious solutions. And since government liability is limited here, a few scapegoats are enough to end the issue.
My point is that without ensuring that the data is good you don’t have science; you have theatre. What is happening here is not malicious fraud but I don’t know if it is much less morally wrong. Pretending one has done science when one not is not so far from faking data in my mind. Now as with the lab workers, these climate researchers may have no choice as too often the decisions are made by people with neither a shreaders of understanding nor experience in the field – generally a politician or high level political appointee – but in the end, the whole thing is built on illusion and people get hurt. Whether it’s patients with dodgy tests or people losing jobs because of economy killing policies based on dodgy science there can be real consequences to complacency in the face of negligence.
“Technology fails with age. Itās normal.”
Silicon degrades 10% in the first 6 months. After that it’s strictly a haphazard scattering of individual hardware failures. Being out in space obviously accelerates the process. Therefore, someone at the Agency responsible for the data integrity has to keep a regular eye on it. Sensitivity on imaging chips and well capacity is going to be hit hard over time. Degradation does not automatically mean failure, but it should mean that the instrument walks away from calibration on a continuous basis.
I guess humans are about as qualified to do science and run companies and states as they are qualified to drive. As in not at all.
Anthony – I appreciate your correction and caution, however it is the “climate of mistrust” that actually lies at the heart of the problem. I place that climate of mistrust right at the feet of those that sought to operate from within taxpayer funded government organisations and create an exclusive “inside team”, that ridiculed others, withheld data, sought to cover up errors and mishandling of the science, bought pressure to bear on the publication and peer review process, and even went to the extent of creating a team propaganda site which is all that Real Climate can be considered these days.
I my humble view, it is those insiders, that have never apologised or even acknowleged the damage they have done to both Climate Science and the real potential that their activities have wasted billions of research dollars and falsely villified other climate scientists in the process.
When you look back over the past few years and also look at type of misinformation and dismissal of other’s qualified opinion on RC, its hardly surprising that the chickens are now coming home to roost. If those employees appear to act publicly and poorly, it must reflect upon the parent organisations they appear to represent. There needs to be a clearing of the house to get rid of this clique and the influence that they “think” they wield.
Otherwise it remains fertile but contaminated ground, ideal for propagating conspiracy theories so well placed upon their personalities and activities, even though they do not (I hope) represent the vast numbers of good scientists that must be associated with these programs (and resent the public face these guys chose for their own personal gratification).
Recommend a tidy up, hedge trimming, better oversight and supervision and less hyperventilation rather than legal circling of the wagons.
Thanks for a worthwhile post, Anthony. I, too was wondering what was going on and why you were ignoring this issue. The incompetence at NOAA, it has to be said, does look pretty massive.
To Mr. Watts/Spencer/Mo(sher:
Agree. The conspiracy-hunters are a detriment to those seeing “truth” (to the James-Pierce extent). Yet look at the NOAA/GISS temperatures of the world a la Greenland showing 2010 temps being the warmest on record and see that they are a) only for part of the year, b) disconnected from 2009. There are a LOT of them on-line, not just for Greenland. You would be hard-pressed not to see an agenda in having them presented. Personlly, I think that conspiracies on an organizational level are impossible at the level of global climate. But on an individual level they are not just possible but probable. The problem is in differentiating the Jim Schmuck from Jim Hansen. Incompetence, from my experience, is less likely to show up than personal agendas or professional needs/beliefs.
Now that the internet is here, the individual is able to have a disproportiate impact on the collective mind. Of course, that is as true of Hansen as of my minimal figure, Jim Schmuck. We are the potential victims of both kinds. The personal responsibility to decide issues for ourselves has never been so important as we hear both distorted sides of the same issue.
Once again, another issue clarified in a sensible manner. I’d also heard the “cover up” story but found many websites not carrying it due to “sensationalist” issues without evidence. Climategate wasn’t one of those because it had evidence – and plenty of it.
Thanks Anthony.
This episode again highlights one thing.
The task of reading, recording and publishing climate data MUST be seperated from the task of analysis, which in turn must be seperated from the task of policy formation.
The first task must be carried our by persons with a great DISINTEREST in analysis and policy, but who are fanatical about the task of ensuring accuracy and validity.
NOAA, GIS, IPCC, all othere government agencies, university researchers and we critics must assign themselves and ourselves to ONLY one of these three vital tasks.
They and we MUST be DISINTERESTED in the other two tasks.
We will continue to go down the (tax) gurgler at a faster and faster rate until that split up in function is done.
Fat chance, you may say.
You may well say that!
But I could never say that, I’m afraid.
Anthony, it’s not the crap data, it’s the lack of scientific responsibility. Under the same circumstances, ask yourself what you would have done? You’re no different than most scientists. NOAA has engaged repeatedly in activism with regard to global climate disruption change warming. If it had remained a non-biased provider of data, one might be inclined to let it slide. However, NOAA has turned to advocacy to promote only one side of the story. Would you agree with me that there is more than one side? I think so. As such the intent of the agency and its scientists is clear. Promote CAGW at every opportunity. Why would you believe me? I’m not asking you to. Spend some time at http://www.noaa.gov/climate.html Search on polar bears. When you find the propaganda on how to convince a denier that the polar bears are disappearing and the lesson plans on sustainability written by Mel Goodwin, a marine biologist by training and former sustainability consultant with The Rockefeller Brothers Fund creators of The Climate Group) you’ll realize that NOAA has become an advocacy group.
http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/edufun/book/WherePolarBears.pdf
It doesn’t stop there. The scientists may be incompetent, Anthony, but they are advocates for CAGW. When the rank and file start throwing out the advocates, maybe NOAA will be useful for more than a radar shot of your local weather. NOAA is due for a serious house cleaning. Former AAAS President and CAGW promoter Lubchenco is a big part of the problem at NOAA and a good place to start.
What I got from this is: The climate models are getting really bad input which they are able to faithfully replicate. Hmmmm, I think I see a problem here.
What exactly are they able to replicate? Anything? Is there an exception to GIGO?
I disagree with Mr. Watts here.
Intentional cover-up of errors, even if errors were initially unintentional, is malice.
Considering the amount of tax money thrown into the government-financed Green Scientology, it is a crime.
To those elsewhere who have attacked Anthony’s character: His public post of his disagreement with a skeptical article containing what he thinks are errors shows all of us the importance of the love of truth rather than the love of whatever propaganda serves one’s argument. Many thanks to Anthony for so much hard work conducted so honestly.
So this data stream failure has been known since 2004, which poses the question, ‘when exactly did these failures start’? I am afraid that Anthony is being too fair. Data failures known for over 6 years, and covered up for whatever so called reasonable reason is covered by the ‘F’ word. NOAA receives billions of dollars from the US government and it must ensure that data it uses to drive government policy is correct and if problems are found then it must say so. In UK law you are guilty if you do not mention a fact- it is called perverting the course of justice. I am sure the US has a similar law.
If I go to a shop, and half the time I am overcharged, and half the time I am undercharged I suspect incompetence. If the errors are always overcharge I suspect it is on purpose.
If I have to roll something into production and I present the state of the system I am taking responsibility for that presentation. If that presentation is incorrect it really does not matter if the system was incapable of the accuracy I was presenting it as – I would be expected to present the tolerance. If I just give somebody access to the data then it comes down to my understanding of the data. It would not be appropriate to give somebody data I knew to be inaccurate without stating that – frankly that would feel like setting them a trap to look incompetent.
The benefit of the doubt is all very well as long as it does not take away the need to take responsibility. If the data errors had demonstrated a cooling trend would they have been handled in the same way? If the answer is no then the benefit of the doubt is misguided.
Bringing in the lawyers is an extreme defensive response not to be taken lightly. It certainly further adds fuel to the the suspicion of guilt fire. And as usual we don’t have all the answers so sadly that leads more people down the conspiracy theory path as well.
Was that ex post facto incompetence too?
Nevertheless, I applaud your even handed approach Anthony.
So, ” we the people” are paying lawyers to help incompetent government employees attempt to hide their incompetencies and continue to refuse to fully reveal the extent and causes of their failures to provide accurate information from government systems they were operating for that purpose?
Substitute “we the people” for “stock holders” and try something like that as a CEO; particularly in the current political environment.
I can’t call the actions of NOAA personnel “fraud”, but they wouldn’t want me on their jury should they ever come to trial. Any competent prosecutor could make the case.
I have worked at relativity high positions in both governmental agencies and private industry as a professional civil engineer.
Once upon a time, before huge government grants were so involved, there seemed to be far more people who had personal ethics. As the funding by government and special interests grew, the number of people practicing a high level of personal ethics shrank. Keeping a good paying job with lots of benefits has a high priority for the vast majority of people. “Scientists” are hardly other than human, and are as apt to become corrupt for money and job security as any other humans.
Perhaps, being an old man now, and as I always had a great sense of personal ethics, and not having, for a long time now any “belief system” at all, and not having an ego that requires living visibly “high on the hog”, I am more critical of what I would label corruption than a good many others.
Too, I can understand the feelings of those “honest” scientists who fear that they (scientists in general) will become stigmatized by the acts of a good many who have been living “high on the hog” at public expense.
Anthony has done fine work in exposing the problems regarding how “climate science” has been gone about, and in exposing the large uncertainties involved, and I am sure, doesn’t want his fine work to devolve to a peeing or mud throwing contest, so I say, good approach, Anthony. The only way we can win the battle before us in our search for as close to truth as we can get is to focus on the science involved, and better educate more people in the fundamentals of chemistry, physics, and mathematics.
This is a wonderful site to hear arguments, both pro and con, about the “changing climate” issues, and to either brush up on science, or learn even more about science. Once again, thank you, Anthony.
Glenn said: (October 4, 2010 at 5:13 pm)
However, Dr. Spencer writes:
A general discussion of the AMSU instrumentation may be found at his site.
Maybe you should clarify something.
UAH just recently started using AQUA. I did not know RSS was using it yet.
When were which satellites being used by which units and what periods of time would have been affected. If UAH or RSS NEVER used the malfunctioning satellites this should be made clear. If they used them for specific periods this also should be made clear along with whatever may have been done to “adjust” for the degradation.
I agree that we do not need hysterical claims of the record being completely unuseable if not true, BUT, this story does NOT clarify the issue due to lack of information.
Maybe a timeline could be published showing who used which satellites during what periods of time and when the specific satellites were suffering degradation or malfunctions?
Never underestimate the employee playing Farmvile at work.
I have first hand witnessed a major cock up happening while a guy was playing AND updating a server…
The mercury in my old thermometer hasn’t degraded with the passing of the last 25 years. It cost next to nothing and I reckon it’ll be accurate for many years to come with close to zero maintenance or calibration.
Spot on post tho.
Larry says:
October 5, 2010 at 3:22 am (Edit)
If I go to a shop, and half the time I am overcharged, and half the time I am undercharged I suspect incompetence. If the errors are always overcharge I suspect it is on purpose.
#####
spencer has documented all the changes, both positive and negative
Very Good Post š
At this stage it doesn’t really matter if the problems are associated with incompetence, malice or conspiracy… these are just divide and rule tactics to deflect and confuse.
The underlying issue is whether the derived results from the satellite sensors are correct… and it is becoming increasingly evident that the black box science associated with the satellite sensors is a faith based belief system… you either believe… or you don’t.
Personally I DO NOT have much faith in the witch doctors that tell us they have all seeing eyes in the sky that can sense everything, everywhere with infallible accuracy.
See http://magicjava.blogspot.com for some insight into the Aqua AMSU black box or should that be bag of tricks
Scammers everywhere batten and depend on the “benefit of the doubt”. What’s needed here is a “Strike One, Strike Two, Strike Three — yer out!” call.