The Central England Temperature Record has been getting some inconvenient attention as of late. Joe D’Aleo at ICECAP pointed out recently:
The Central England Temperature record is one of the longest continuous temperature record in the world extending back to the Little Ice age in 1659. December 2010 was the coldest December in 120 years with an average of -0.7C just short of the record of -0.8C recorded in December 1890 and the Second Coldest December Temperature in the entire record (352 years).
I don’t know if it is simply sloppy webkeeping or related to the fact that the CET isn’t cooperating with the AGW expectations, but the Met Office seems to be burying the data from easy public access. They haven’t eliminated it, but it is now harder to find, and what was once a direct link now points to a general purpose climate change page.
WUWT reader Steve Rosser writes:
…the UK Met Office website, it’s undergoing a refresh at the moment and the CET link seems to have been mysteriously cut. It used to be readily accessible via the UK Climate summaries page, see below, however this link now redirects you to a global temperature page instead.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2010/
Thinking it may be a genuine mistake I e-mailed an enquiry and received a very polite response redirecting me to find it via the obscure link below. It’s hard to argue that this location provides a sufficiently high profile for such an august dataset..
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/people/david-parker
It may be that the original link will reinstated over the next few days in which case this is a non story. However, it looks suspicously like they are taking the focus away from the CET as after 2010 it’s showing an embarrasing disinclination to follow the AGW orthodoxy (+0.4 deg C since 1780). To do so would be a betrayal of their lack of impartiality which I’d personally find very disappointing. It would also send a message that rather than face-up and make the case for 2010 being a rogue year for UK temperatures they’d rather brush the whole thing under the carpet. I hope I’m wrong.
I checked the pages, and what he says is true. First here’s the main climate page of the Met Office: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2010/
Note the CET link highlighted in yellow:
This is the page that CET link takes you to:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change/guide/science/monitoring
There’s not a single mention of the CET on that page, but plenty of other datasets are mentioned.
Fortunately, the CET data page is still available, on another Met Office server here, but if you don’t know where to look, you won’t find it easily via the Met Office Climate page.
As I said earlier, this may be sloppy, or it may be intentional.
Given the mess related to the winter forecast we’ve recently seen from the Met Office, I’m inclined to invoke the
“never attribute malice to what can be explained by simple stupidity”
clause.
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“Cold Englishman says:
February 14, 2011 at 3:29 pm
Roger Knights says:
February 14, 2011 at 10:12 am
meemoe_uk says:
February 14, 2011 at 8:07 am
I’d attribute malice myself.
Me too.
And me”
And me.
Chris in Hervey Bay wrote:
“As abhorrent as it sounds, we must take the fight up to the criminals now, both barrels, using their tactics.”
I disagree. I think that one can recognize the full extent of corruption one is up against, without yielding to similar corruption oneself. Steve McIntyre’s patient work provides a good model. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are other models worth considering.
Chris in Hervey Bay says:
February 14, 2011 at 3:17 pm
How many of you have said, or words to the effect, “I don’t know how he/she could have done such a terrible thing?”?
It’s a good question. I’d been watching some WWII documentary and was struck by how, practically, a whole nation had got caught up in justifying denigration of others as subhuman and knew they were invading countries to destroy and steal and meanwhile they were living a life of calm civility among themselves – going to concerts, trips with the children, picnics.
I asked the question on a discussion board some time ago and got an interesting answer. That around 6% of people are sociopaths, and when these get into positions of power they first of all attract like, and then mostly people who are not, but who are in some way damaged by experience and which unresolved makes them believe that what they are involved in, sociopathic behaviour, is the norm. The rest is brainwashing of the young to make them believe it is the normal way of things, which happened in Germany and Russia and China, and happening in AGW, and the rest trying to survive as best they can in a system which hates them.
We make those statements because the actions of the dishonest are totally incomprehensible to the honest so we make allowances for their actions, like, they must have made a mistake, they were stupid or some other feeble excuse and never consider that they plotted and planned their actions right down to the last detail.
I think there’s a difference between giving someone the benefit of the doubt, who hasn’t done something out of stupidity?, when we recognise this could be possible in ourselves. We’re much more likely, I think, to first think it is a mistake, or an aberration, and I imagine most of the time it is. The alternative to that, istm, is to get paranoid very quickly.. sells newspapers. Fear is easily generated, and we end up too frightened to let our children walk a couple of miles to school and with draconian laws treating everyone who comes into contact with them as if they’re all child molestors.
I’ve travelled a lot around the world and I think the default position of mankind is goodness, hospitality, in that we’re creatures of co-operation; from family life generally to societies. It’s when this ‘balance’ is really disturbed that other possibilities in our natures can come to the fore for ill and create havoc, and that’s a different kind of excusing by thinking these ‘stupid’ – it doesn’t matter how malicious, how planned in deceit, how ostensibly clever, powerful, it’s very difficult to take these people as ‘normal’. Frightening, yes, but not normal. But then, some people think subjugation to royalty is normal, that getting medals for murdering in wars is normal; must be, society applauds it, honours it, dresses up for it…
But is it actually anyone’s fault for being what they are?
Surprise surprise. This is exactly what the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) did a few months ago. A “revamp” of the website, and all of a sudden easy access to the map-clickable 100-year and 150-year temperature station series was buried under 4 layers of obscure directions. Of course the data is still there (they wouldnt dare destroy data would they???) but it is now difficult to find and difficult to analyse.
Combined with the revelations that some of the original temperature records in New Zealand were “lost” by NIWA, it makes you wonder when three closely connected government bodies, each charged with the collection, safe keeping and distribution of climate data, all do similar things at the same time?
neither blunder nor conspiracy.
They just don’t give it priority as a data record, naturally, given what it shows, yet they can’t deny its existence either
I find some websites put their “contact us” in the obscurest locations, so they can deal with fewer possible emails and queries.
I checked the CET links I used for my January 2011 postings. Indeed, both postings were based on the data found at http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat, which was the same Met link used for the 2010 postings at C3 that other commenters have mentioned.
2011 postings on CET are here:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/01/are-modern-temp-changes-unprecedented-2010cet.html and http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/01/worlds-oldest-temperature-record-no-significant-warming-since-1995-cooling-instead.html
BTW, if any WUWT reader ever has need for a C3 graph/chart without the yellow text box or chart title just send me an email request (see banner at top of C3 home page for email address).
Jim @ur momisugly C3
This is politics. As FDR (?) famously said, “In politics, if it happened, it wasn’t an accident.”
Occam’s Razor is now on the side of malice as an explanation, abetted by bureaucratic CYA skills, honed for untold generations.
Ken Smith says:
February 14, 2011 at 4:58 pm
I disagree. I think that one can recognize the full extent of corruption one is up against, without yielding to similar corruption oneself. Steve McIntyre’s patient work provides a good model. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are other models worth considering.
———————————————————————————————————–
Ken, it’s OK to disagree, though I’ll just point out a couple of things.
I do admire Steve McIntyre’s patient work and his gentle ways, I read all his posts and have done so for years. He does wonderful work but it is not well recognised outside the blogosphere. All his great work has not been recognised by the public at large. At the moment, he is just chipping away at a very, very large block.
As I said above the criminals, (and that’s what they are, are stealing, not only our money but eventually our life style) have got control of the media.
When the MSM have headlines that show, Steve McIntyre proves beyond doubt climate change is not man made, and news stating scientists are being arrested for fraud, and charged and locked up, I, then will believe that the sceptics have had an effective campaign against this fraud.
The way I see it, Steve makes terrific bullets but we have no one to fire them. The only thing we have is the blogosphere, and after 30 years it is shown to be no way as effective as the MSM.
How many times have you heard any politician say “Steve McIntyre said……” ?
Yes, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are other models worth considering.
Also consider, they had the support of a large proportion of the population and support of some of the media outlets. They could afford to sit back and let others do the work where the rubber hits the road. By saying that, it should take no credibility away from their leadership.
We don’t even have a popular leader !
We have the troops, at least here in Australia we do. A recent news poll showed 89% to 11% against a “Carbon Tax”.
My point is still, unless we get organised, as those in Egypt did, the sceptics will succumb to this green, socialist cancer.
Chris in Hervey Bay says:
The only thing we have is the blogosphere, and after 30 years it is shown to be no way as effective as the MSM.
I’m pretty sure the “blogosphere” hasn’t been around for 30 years – and I would argue that it’s proven QUITE effective at countering the MSM, given the change in the discussion in the past 10 years or so.
30 years ago, you wouldn’t have even KNOWN there was a different perspective.
While we’re at it, there are some US datasets that appear to have stopped updating…
* ENSO data at http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst.for
* experimental 6-month climate forecasts at http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfs_fcst/images3/glbT2mMon.gif
* 6 month ENSO forecasts…
— raw at http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfs_fcst/images3/nino34SSTMon.gif
— PDF-corrected at http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/people/wwang/cfs_fcst/images3/PDFcr_nino34SSTMon.gif
I can duplicate the first item “the hard way”. By the way, Nino34 has weakened slightly from -1.48839 last week to -1.15485 this week.
Notwithstanding any previous comment, sure looks like someone is measuring the UHI effect. Remember: stupid is as stupid does!
Tony says:
February 14, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Chris in Hervey Bay says:
The only thing we have is the blogosphere, and after 30 years it is shown to be no way as effective as the MSM.
I’m pretty sure the “blogosphere” hasn’t been around for 30 years
———————————————————————————————————
Quite right Tony, the blogosphere hasn’t been around 30 years.
While we “nit pick” our own writings, the whole climate change scam marches on.
In Australia, I can not see where the blogosphere has had any effect in countering the MSM or the thoughts of our politicians.
Every day on our TV news, we are bombarded with rubbish like the drought, the floods, the hot, the cold, dead coral, dead fish, the Barrier reef will be gone, sea side homes flooded by sea rise, the list goes on and on. So where did the blogosphere counter that ?
The government still carries along its merry way, we will have a carbon tax this year and the alternative government has said bugger all about it. So where did the blogosphere counter that ?
Tony, my whole point is, we are not organized.
CET via KNMI:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/tcet.dat
HOMER: Gee, Lisa, looks like tomorrow, I’ll be shoveling 10 feet of global warming.
LISA: Global warming can cause weather at both extremes, hot and cold.
HOMER: I see. So you’re saying warming makes it colder. Well, aren’t you the queen of crazy land! Everything’s the opposite of everything
Presumably the MET’s preferred scenario – adjustment, homogenisation followed by an unexplained loss of raw data (if that can be arranged without forensic evidence).
Transalted into Australian, the saying
“Never attribute malice to what can be explained by simple stupidity”
reads
“If there’s a cloice between a conspiracy and a cock-up, choose teh cock-up every time.”
okie333 says:
February 14, 2011 at 12:28 pm
“The Daily CET Anomaly page at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/indicators.html is also down.”
It gets curiouser and curiouser Okie!
The daily CET max / min / mean graphs are still being updated on our governments web-archive site here…
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/indicators.html
Perhaps they really are trying to hide the decline again???
To Chris in Hervey Bay .
Hi Chris, you have some true points. I myself have tried to make some little difference in the debate http://www.hidethedecline.eu but the impact of sinlge persons sometimes seems tiny, and thus not really motivating to keep up the effort.
Some kind of further organization perhaps is the answer. However, we do have a handful of effective webvoices like Watts, Joanne Nova etc. but its true: Medias are slow to follow sceptic views.
Its tricky to point out some kind of “leader” since this is science and a such would need scientific skills as well as a good politically clever person. However, perhaps this strategy of some kind of spokesman was succesful for alarmists using Al Gore. Like it or not but he really reached a lot of people.
Heartlans inst, SPPI we have some rather good basis though.
K.R. Frank
I’m with Anthony on this one and Frank Zappa would appear to agree also.
“Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.”
Chris in Hervey Bay says:
In Australia, I can not see where the blogosphere has had any effect in countering the MSM or the thoughts of our politicians.
While it may not be making much difference there, I’d say it’s at least starting to have an effect in the US. But ANY change of that level takes time. The MSM has been around for quite some time – it will take quite some time to make ANY advances against such a well-established propaganda machine. I think you might want too much too quickly on that front.
Every day on our TV news, we are bombarded with rubbish like the drought, the floods, the hot, the cold, dead coral, dead fish, the Barrier reef will be gone, sea side homes flooded by sea rise, the list goes on and on. So where did the blogosphere counter that ?
By the fact that ANYONE is even AWARE that a debate exists. 30 years ago, even THAT wouldn’t have happened
Tony, my whole point is, we are not organized.
I won’t argue with that point at all.
The Met office have now changed the links so that you go directly from the CET link on the uk/2010/ page to the CET page on the hadobs site.
Interesting that the people at the Met Office read WUWT and act on it!
[of course they do ]
You guys are all a bunch of flat earthers with no knowledge of how the climate works. If you don’t understand it please don’t post.
REPLY: Gosh, he said “please”, well that make it OK then /sarc – Anthony
As a matter of information, there is a marvellous website http://www.archive.org/web/web.php which enables you to see snaphots of public websites going back approximately 10 years. There are 18 snapshots of the Met Office website between 2001 and 2007. It is very useful for checking information on websites that might have been changed.
Regards
Speaking of tricks…
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/data-corruption-at-giss/
Visualize Al Gore as a single whale and the skeptic blogoshpere as uncounted schools of Piranha and Great White Sharks. Do not underestimate the influence of the skeptical blogosphere. Billions of dollars, Euros, and other currencies have gone unsuccessfully into an effort to suppress, marginalize, and effectively silence critizism from skeptics. Reducing the number of targeted skeptics only makes the task of marginalizing and silencing the skeptics easier. While some measure of organization to maintain the schools of skeptics, too much organization and management risks subversion, division, and is counterproductive to a genuine grassroots movement.