Zeke is upset that I made this statement in a story at Fox news:
Is history malleable? Can temperature data of the past be molded to fit a purpose? It certainly seems to be the case here, where the temperature for July 1936 reported … changes with the moment. In the business and trading world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data.
he says:
In the spirit of civility, I would ask Anthony to retract his remarks. He may well disagree with NCDC’s approach and results, but accusing them of fraud is one step too far.
I’d point out that Zeke has his interpretation but nowhere did I say “fraud”. He’s mad, and people don’t often think clearly when they are mad. That’s OK.
Without getting into semantics, I’d like to ask Zeke these simple questions:
- What is the CONUS average temperature for July 1936 today?
- What was it a year ago?
- What was it ten years ago? Twenty years ago?
- What was it in late 1936, when all the data had been first compiled?
We already know the answers to questions 1 and 2 from my posting here, and they are 76.43°F and 77.4°F respectively, so Zeke really only needs to answer questions 3 and 4.
The answers to these questions will be telling, and I welcome them. We don’t need broad analyses or justifications for processes, just the simple numbers in Fahrenheit will do.
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Where did I find this?
‘Despite these uncertainties and doubts, the IPCC continues in the manner best described by a Polish aphorism much heard during the Soviet-dominated 1970s:
“The future is certain, only the past is unpredictable.” ’
I’m so confused, this thread has four different values for July 1936 in the US, yet elsewhere Steven Mosher keeps saying you can drop stations and the answer doesn’t change.
Will no-one think of the poor climate modelers, successfully predicting(*) the past only to have it change on them!
To be serious, does this affect the modellers, if they validate the models against past temperatures (as the UKMO seems to indicate), then was the model correct ten years ago, but not today because the temp record has changed?
* UKMO terminology
I’ve had many unanswered questions from Zeke – like how does his data homoginization fix the UHI problem as opposed to just spreading it out evenly. If you want to clean your house do you just take the piles of dirt and distribute them evenly over your floor Zeke?
Just noticed an interesting one Zeke. On page 27 of this NOAA report:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
we see modeled CFSv2 forcasts taking a hard and immediate angled change to the El Nino side. How does that happen in the real world? What are the chances of that happening in the real world? What kind of model produces such instantaneous changes of direction?
“I still do not understand how an English major with no scientific background got on the BEST team?”
Yeah, but you should see the degree after it was adjusted.
Nice to see still no answers.
Using anomalies is science?
How?
When the mean keeps moving, has no error bars and is carefully not documented on each anomaly graph.
Without the specific mean for these anomalies, in degrees C, with estimated error range, stated on the graph, the anomalies are not information.
Of course it makes the headline 2012 hottest ever, 0.76F higher than 1936. Error range + or-3F.
Might do some damage to the cause if the accuracy of your guess was openly stated?
Wow, Zeke certainly “led with the chin”, he was gunna bash your hand with his face Anthony.
Or to put it even more bluntly, ” Anthony has shot Zeke fair in the ass …… Can’t even find the bullet hole!”
Thanks for the info. The gist, on reading, is that on a regional basis you need to boost the old minimums and scrunch the old maximums. Now, I know the fellas doing this work aren’t steering the boat, but don’t you think that someone might have said “Gee, maybe we should run a representitive sample of LIG’s and MMTS’s in parallel to get a good handle on the potential for the introduction of systemic biases”? This is kinda like the whole not-testing-the-mirror fiasco with Hubble, only dumber. I’d like to think it’s the fault of some penny-pinching rent-seeking desk jockey but…
D J Hawkins asks “why are modern temperatures adjusted UP???”
Probably so they can be adjusted down more easily later on as required to keep the wave (trend) in play. So far Mosher defends this with snark, (isn’t he the English major after all) and Hausfather uses obfuscation and leger de main. The bottom line is that this ridiculous process serves the very useful purpose of giving the warmists the propaganda coup of claiming recent years are the warmest ever. This coming out of one side of the mouth while the other is saying we could never know what the real temperature was in the 30’s. So it’s useful, therefore it will continue until a better ploy is found notwithstanding it fails to meet any reasonable standards of logic, science, truth, or ethical practices. It’s the nature trick to hide the decline all over again – appending one record for apples onto another for oranges and pretending (even as they make them more and more different) that by always adjusting the oranges down and the apples up they magically become the same fruit – and the warmest fruit ever to boot. It’s actually pretty funny to think that anyone falls for it and funnier still to see people trying to defend it.
LOL.
It’s easy to compare stations that are close together, and see that even over short distances <50 miles temperatures are different, spatially averaging to compensate for missing stations does not create a value that has any relationship to reality. And if averaging the actual station values of 1936 doesn't give you a valid number, how can you compare it to an average that's made up from made up numbers to compensate for missing stations, and then try to tell me that you can measure a trend from this, it is all basically made up, and in no way is it relate-able to the made up number from different years (because they all have a different number of stations).
You either compare your measurements, or you can't compare anything, or you're being dishonest.
D.J. the paper even mentions that “pre-1975 LIGs may be of higher quality” but they never do any research to determine this. IMO there is no way to reliably test this as there is no way to retrieve and test any of the LIGs when first installed if at all, How do they know their accuracy did not change over time? Especially over 100 years? Different brands, makes and models as well as design, materials, manufacturing processes and quality control are all variables they cannot account for.
Bernal, post of the day, LOL
I have read numerous studies showing the Holocene Climatic Optimum of 9,000 to 5,000 years ago had significantly higher temperatures and sea levels than now, and that there were succeeding warm periods – the Egyptian, Minoan, Roman, and Medieval – that were each cooler than their predecessor, and that each were warmer than the present. Another recent study showed that Greenland was 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer 8,000 years ago, which supported another Greenland ice core study that determined that 9,100 of the past 10,000 years in Greenland were warmer than any one of the past 100 years.
Why then, Zeke, is there such a desire to worry the temperature records for 1.5% of the Earth’s surface for the past 100 years to death? What importance is there that, thanks to unclearly documented “homogenization”, the temperature for July 2012 compared to July 1936 deserves headlines? As you wrote, the temperatures when compared fall within the error band. A bit better use of time would be to determine where 1934 fits into the great scheme of comparisons. Or how all of the maximum temperature readings of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s can be explained away. Or how the studiously augmented US temperatures of the past decade stack up against the flat global temperature trend of almost two decades and continuing.
When all is properly homogenized, and following the example of Phil Jones, all the raw data is “lost”, then the climate community can start rewriting Dr. Lamb’s “Climatic History and the Future” and his other works to conform the climatic history of the past 20,000 years to its desired form. Of course that would also require the “homogenization” of the thousands of studies by hundreds of scientists that Lamb cites, but once a task is begun, it needs finishing, doesn’t it?
I avoid that site like the plague
Looks like Zeke could be right, NOAA says 2012 was the hottest year on record.
davidmhoffer said @ur momisugly January 23, 2013 at 7:41 pm
More like averaging the density of apples and pears to arrive at the density of pumpkins when the customer only wants the price per kilogram of your pumpkins 😉
I want to thank you Zeke Hausfather for coming here and truthfully addressing the issues raised by followers of this site.
I read the link: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
and it ends with this, For the global mean, the most trusted models produce a value of roughly 14°C, i.e. 57.2°F, but it may easily be anywhere between 56 and 58°F and regionally, let alone locally, the situation is even worse.
Thanks for the link. It is a good explanation but if I’m not mistaken, it proves Antony’s point exactly.
Mosher..
And those that go along with the data manipulation and accept it, are nothing more than “collaborators” with ALL its nasty connotations.
You are becoming one !
It seems any pretence you once had towards science, has disappeared. Pity.
Question though… who got to you ????
Let’s have a look of history revisionism. There we have older data processing result where the 1936 temperature is 77F. Here we have newer data processing result where the 1936 temperature is 76F. There we have older processing result saying there was no MWP. Here we have newer data processing result saying the MWP was there.
Now we should ask ourselves which of the historic revisionism do we really want to stop and why. Or how exactly is it with the history malleability.
Now seriously. That original statement was definitely suggesting that the change was made on purpose. I’m not aware of any proof for it. I don’t have any high confidence in GISS temperature data processing, from the latest comparison using climate model data it came out worst of the three (BEST, HADCRUT, GISS). But to prove they’re doing it wrong on purpose, you’d have to come with a bit stronger evidence.
“Matthew R Marler says:
January 23, 2013 at 7:51 pm
In the business and trading world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data.
Unless you redefine “such”, that is an accusation of fraud.
Well, unless you are instead claiming unjust imprisonment.”
Matt, can you cite the criminal code that prohibits manipulation of 1936 temp data? Is it called fraud? Is jail time a possible penalty? Is their a statute of limitations with regard to the age of the data?
climatebeagle says:
January 23, 2013 at 8:34 pm
“I’m so confused, this thread has four different values for July 1936 in the US, yet elsewhere Steven Mosher keeps saying you can drop stations and the answer doesn’t change.”
I think it’s called “Mosher’s Delayed-Choice Gedanken Experiment” or something like that.
This is a very important matter and I am pleased to see it being pursued by WUWT. Zeke Hausfather appears to be rather cornered by questions 3 & 4, as his reaction to questioning shows. It is prudent to be careful as I have seen cornered rats before and they are extremely vicious and have large teeth.
“But to prove they’re doing it wrong on purpose, you’d have to come with a bit stronger evidence.”
If you look at the percentage of “adjustments” that lead to an increase in temperature trend , that will immediately tell that it hasn’t happened by chance, This is totally beyond the possibility of any statistical scenario.
There is NO DOUBT that there has been systematic “adjustments ” to increase trends from the original raw data.
I’m betting that communications have continued between GISS and Had as well, but they have been much more careful to hide them.
@Monique:
Glacials last about 120,000 years, interglacials (like now) about 12,000 or about 1/10 as long.
The natural state of the earth is frozen into an ice age glacial. We only have a warm interglacial when just the right combination of earth axis tilt, circularity of the orbit, and when the tilt is aimed at the sun (‘precession’) are just right. That points the north pole at the sun for a longer period of time and melts the ice. Other than that, we’re frozen.
The “magic cutoff” is just a couple of Watts / square meter different from where we are now. Orbital mechanics make it inevitable that we lose those last Watts. Soon.
So yes, there is a ‘tipping point’ but only into a glacial, not to ‘extra warm’. (Not enough Watts any more for that.) See the chart in the top of this posting:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/annoying-lead-time-graph/
@Zeke:
The “raw” data are not really raw. They have been “Quality Controlled” in a variety of ways… that sometimes involve replacement with synthesized values. That was one of my first surprises in looking at the “data”.
@All:
I did a compare of GHCN v1 to v3 for the same time period. Each station has an anomaly taken as the very first step. (The ‘climate science’ guys often wait to the end when they have a ‘grid box’ then take a fictional ‘anomaly’ between two boxes without real thermometers in them. Ask them at what point a given thermometer has an anomaly taken of that thermometer data only compared to itself. In other words, a proper anomaly step prior to any other manipulation…)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/v1vsv3/
Here is the graph of ONLY anomaly vs anomaly for the “same” data set (GHCN) for the same period of time:
The past cools, the present warms, and about the same amount as “global warming”.
All comparison done ONLY as anomalies. A thermometer ONLY compared to itself.
The anomaly dodge is just that, a dodge. The data contents are being tilted toward a warming trend. Why? Is it valid? Those are left unanswered…
Please explain what you were hinting at by saying people in finance would go to jail, if not for fraud?