The IPCC fraud case (but not the planet) hots up
Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Two weeks ago I reported the central error in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007) to its secretariat. After the contributing scientists had submitted their final draft report, the bureaucrats and politicians had tampered with the HadCRUt3 graph of global instrumental temperatures since 1850 by adding four trend-lines to the anomaly curve and drawing from their relative slopes the unjustifiable and statistically indefensible conclusion, stated twice in the published report, that global warming was “accelerating” and that the “acceleration” was our fault.
Global warming is not accelerating. The planet is not hotting up. There has been no warming for 17 years on any measure, as the IPCC’s climate-science chairman now admits. That includes the Hadley/CRU data. There has been no warming for 23 years according to RSS satellite dataset.
The IPCC’s central projection of warming since 2005 (bright red), taken from the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report, is visibly at odds with the linear-regression trend (bright blue) on the latest version (HadCRUt4) of the monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly curve (dark blue):
I received no reply to my report of the IPCC’s erroneous conclusion that global warming was “accelerating”. So today I wrote to the IPCC again:
“I am an expert reviewer for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I wrote to you two weeks ago to report a serious error in the Fourth Assessment Report. I have had no reply. My letter of two weeks ago is attached, together with a copy of a letter I have sent to the Inter-Academy Council asking it to use its good offices to persuade you to reply. I have also sent a letter, for information only at this stage, to the police in Geneva, since it appears that a fraud may have been committed by the IPCC.”
In my letter to the police in Geneva, which I also copied to the Serious Fraud Office in London and the Office of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I wrote:
“The attached correspondence evidences a fraud at the IPCC. Its secretariat has not responded to my report of an error in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007). The error is serious. I can prove it is deliberate. It is designed to demonstrate by deception that the world is warming ever faster and that we are to blame. It is one of a series of ingenious, connected frauds that have profited a few at great expense to many.
“The frauds are wilful deceptions calculated to cause loss to taxpayers by tampering with scientific data and results so as to exaggerate the rate and supposed adverse consequences of global warming. Scientific debate is legitimate: subjective distortion of objective science for profit is not.
“This letter is for information. If after a further week the IPCC (to which I am copying this letter) fails to acknowledge my report of its error as its own procedures require, I shall invite you to investigate this and other connected frauds, which involve larger sums than any previous fraud.”
The IPCC has not delayed in replying this time:
“We acknowledge receipt of your message copied below and of your letter dated 4 May 2013, received earlier today as an attachment to that message. Your email with attachments of today is the first communication received at the IPCC Secretariat from you on this matter.
“We would like to inform you that the error claim that you have submitted is now being taken care of as per the IPCC Protocol for Addressing Errors in IPCC Assessment Reports, Synthesis Reports, Special Reports or Methodology Reports, available on the IPCC website. Steps 1 and 2 of the protocol are now completed; the IPCC Working Group I will deal with next steps as appropriate. As per the protocol, the IPCC Secretariat will inform you of the conclusions of the process.”
I have thanked the IPCC for passing on my report of its error in the Fourth Assessment Report and have told the police the IPCC have now replied. It is clear from the IPCC Secretariat’s reply that Dr. Pachauri, to whom I had reported the error in writing and in person as long ago as 2009, had not passed my report of the error to the Secretariat as he should have done. No doubt there will now be an internal enquiry to discover why he did not pass it on.
When the error has been investigated and the IPCC has reported back to me, I shall let you – and the prosecuting authorities of three nations – know the outcome.
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“the seeker after truth”= Honesty.
Honesty are like manners and my nan taught me manners are free, I guess honesty can be bought.
Thank You.
@Skiphil
Pachauri says:
“On many small islands, the sea level has risen above one meter.”
Name me just one.
I really like Monckton but every time he rattles his saber and makes ridiculous (even if perfectly justified assertions of fraud) he become less plausible as a critic.
Popcorn and armchair time!
Loving your work.
TheInquirer says: @ur momisugly May 20, 2013 at 10:26 pm….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This song is just for you: VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CWIIoSf4nw LYRICS: http://www.azirishmusic.com/songs/104.htm
jim bishop says: @ur momisugly May 21, 2013 at 6:10 am
Sadly the bbc are no less warmist than before…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And behind the scenes they are no doubt scrambling to move what is left of their pension fund and individual savings to safer ground. No wonder the US stock market is looking great. /sarc
CD says: @May 22, 2013 at 2:51 am
I really like Monckton but every time he rattles his saber and makes ridiculous (even if perfectly justified assertions of fraud) he become less plausible as a critic.
>>>>>
I don’t see anything ridiculous about them. It may be naive to think they will be acted on, but that doesn’t negate their seriousness. Also, as a publicity stunt alone, what Lord Monkton has done is brilliant, and in order to win over the minds and hearts of the the general public on this issue, good publicity is a must.
Tim
I agree about the Lord Moncktons service but suggesting their actions are fraudulent is a step too far. You’ll find bad stats everywhere in government when they spin the facts.
I call ‘spin’ ‘lying”.
Forgive me for asking, how do you define ‘spin’?
Does the fact that everyone in government is telling lies justify lying?
Glad that someone is taking up the issue of temperature fraud. I ran into it when doing research for my book “What Warming?” It turned out that according to satellites there was a warming pause in the eighties and nineties but official temperature curves at the same time had a “late twentieth century warming” in that time slot. I began to understand why satellite data never appears in official records. I pointed this fake warming out in the book but was totally ignored. Until last fall, that is, When GISTEMP, HadCRUT and NCDC in unison decided to get rid of that fake warming. Nothing was said and I doubt anybody has noticed but they apparently felt that they had to cover themselves. I must write this up with more documentation.
Lord Monckton correctly claims that the IPCC claim that global warming was ” accelerating” was false. He incorrectly claims that “the global warming is not accelerating” and that “there has been no warming for 17 years on any measure…”
Monckton’s claims assume linearity of the relationship between the spatially and temporily averaged temperature at Earth’s surface and the time. This temperature does not, however, exist. What we have are spatially averaged temperatures measured at discrete intervals in time and not supporting Monckton’s assumption of linearity.
Terry Oldberg says:
May 22, 2013 at 9:03 pm
Lord Monckton correctly claims that the IPCC claim that global warming was ” accelerating” was false. He incorrectly claims that “the global warming is not accelerating” and that “there has been no warming for 17 years on any measure…”
Monckton’s claims assume linearity of the relationship between the spatially and temporily averaged temperature at Earth’s surface and the time. This temperature does not, however, exist. What we have are spatially averaged temperatures measured at discrete intervals in time and not supporting Monckton’s assumption of linearity.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
@terry: The only place I see the word linearity is in YOUR interpretation. I believe the issue is with the IPCC claims and the temperatures used by IPCC to make those claims. The numbers used to define the temperature values in question are not increasing at an accelerated rate. Even alarmist admit as such and are looking for the missing heat.
@Arno Arrak says:
May 22, 2013 at 4:15 pm
Glad that someone is taking up the issue of temperature fraud. I ran into it when doing research for my book “What Warming?” It turned out that according to satellites there was a warming pause in the eighties and nineties but official temperature curves at the same time had a “late twentieth century warming” in that time slot. I began to understand why satellite data never appears in official records. I pointed this fake warming out in the book but was totally ignored. Until last fall, that is, When GISTEMP, HadCRUT and NCDC in unison decided to get rid of that fake warming. Nothing was said and I doubt anybody has noticed but they apparently felt that they had to cover themselves. I must write this up with more documentation.
++++++++++++++
One wonders if by getting rid of the fake heat, it makes the past a bit cooler such that today’s cooling look flat or looks like slight warming compared to the newly revised adjusted past.
They can play games like this all the time. They raise temperatures in the past to show warming. Then they cool the past to show present day warming. It’s like that drawing of the square staircase that always goes up hill, but leads back to the same spot if you keep climbing…
One Lord Monckton is not enough.
Here in Germany we need at least ten…
Thanks for everything you did!
Mr. Oldberg, in a characteristically confused comment, agrees with me that the IPCC was wrong to say global warming is accelerating, but disagrees with my statement that global warming is not accelerating. The truth is that by 2007 global warming was not accelerating, and it is not accelerating today.
Mr. Oldberg also says I was wrong to say there has been no warming for at least 17 years on any measure. However, not one of the five global mean surface temperature temperature anomaly datasets shows warming statistically distinguishable from zero for at least 18 years. See Werner Brozek’s earlier contribution to this thread. Measurements of ocean temperature, and particularly of deep-ocean temperature, are too sparse to provide reliable information. Measurements of sea level (which are not temperature measurements in any event) conflict with one another. The GRACE gravitational-anomaly satellites show a fall in sea level throughout the admittedly short period of record.
Mr. Oldberg continues to confuse himself by saying that I am making “claims” that “assume linearity of the relationship between the spatially and temporily averaged temperature at Earth’s surface and the time.” As I have pointed out before, I make no such naive assumption. However, as any elementary textbook of statistics will tell him, in a dataset subject to very wide uncertainties the least inappropriate trend-line is the least-squares linear-regression trend. Higher-order polynomial fits are not appropriate because the uncertainties in the underlying data are too great. The IPCC itself uses linear trends in the fraudulent graph that is the subject of the head posting. If Mr. Oldberg disagrees with its using linear trends, he should address his complaint not to me but to the IPCC Secretariat, which will refer his complaint to scientists for evaluation.
A few commenters have said that my reporting the IPCC’s fraud is a publicity stunt. No: it is a straightforward report of an error that appears fraudulent, in accordance with a procedure that I had recommended to the Inter-Academy Council and which the Council – and eventually the IPCC – accepted.
A few other commenters have said there is no point in reporting errors to the IPCC because it will merely use further statistical prestidigitation to air-brush the errors away. If the IPCC were to try any more fiddling to try to justify its indefensible graph, it would merely further – and perhaps fatally – undermine its already much-tarnished credibility.
For the IPCC, this is an interesting moment. If it now accepts that its tampering with the graph originally submitted by its scientists was unjustifiable and publishes a correction, it will have to endure some temporary embarrassment but will have demonstrated that it is, after all, interested in seeking after truth. Of course, those learned journals and government departments that explicitly relied upon the IPCC’s erroneous conclusion that global warming is accelerating and that we are to blame will also endure embarrassment and will have to rethink their habit of unquestioningly believing whatever its Four Gospels have proclaimed.
If, on the other hand, the IPCC attempts a fudge, or tries not to address the error at all, or tries in any unscientific or politicized fashion to uphold what an eminent statistician whom I had consulted says is indeed an unquestionable error, its officials know full well that its fraud – which its intransigence will have confirmed – will be referred to prosecuting authorities worldwide, together with reports of various connected frauds perpetrated not only by the IPCC but by “learned” journals, climate “scientists”, “environmental” groups and others who have racketeered and profiteered wantonly for decades at unprecedented expense to taxpayers. Enough is enough.
Monckton of Brenchley:
Your opening statement that I am “characteristically confused” is an example of an ad hominem argument. As you know, ad hominem arguments are illogical. Thus, for you to make this one is for you to deliberately muddy the waters that surround the matter which is at issue. For the future, if you were to avoid muddying the waters in this way, I would appreciate same. I think Anthony Watts would appreciate it also.
Regarding the claim of mine with which you take issue, the temperature at Earth’s surface fluctuates upward and downward on a daily basis. Thus, under literal interpretation of the phrase “global warming,” the proposition that there has been no global warming over an 18 year period is false.
Your claim that “…not one of the five global mean surface temperature temperature anomaly datasets shows warming statistically distinguishable from zero for at least 18 years” is based upon a model. Supposedly, underlying this model is a statistical population whose elements are global temperatures. The model assumes that the population mean varies linearly with the time. When you claim the warming over the 18 years is statistically indistinguishable from zero, your reference is to the time rate of change of the population mean and not to the actual temperature. Your assumption of linearity is additionally made in computing confidence bounds on the time rate of change. It is these confidence bounds that lead to the conclusion that the time rate of change is statistically insignificant.
The assumption that the population mean varies linearly with respect to the time is insusceptible to being tested because the vast majority of the elements of this “population” do not exist; the only elements of it that do exist are recorded temperatures in a global temperature time series and they are an infinitesimal fraction of the temperatures in the mostly imaginary “population.” The missing temperatures are insusceptible to being observed as they lie in the past. Thus, the assumed linearity is not testable. Under this circumstance, the scientific method does not allow one to make the linearity assumption.
=============================
Joseph A Olson says:
May 20, 2013 at 6:31 pm
Handmaidens to the oligarchy, the BBC has finally arrived at the NO Warm party….
http://BBC.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567023
=============================
Big story. I wonder why Roger Harrabin’s name wasn’t on the byline…
A linear approach sometimes gives you an insight of the non linearity of the system…
Note my results here
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
which on energy-in (maximum temps.) led to me this..
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
which led me to the conclusion:
that earth is most likely on an 88 year A-C wave, the so-called Gleissberg solar/weather cycle, with ca. 44 years of warming followed by 44 years of cooling.
Indeed, I hope that this is the best fit for my data, because any of the other best fits that I could think of, would have us end up in much more global cooling. The results of my plot also suggest that this global cooling already started in 1995 (looking at ENERGY-IN) and will last until ca. 2039. Also, from the look at my tables, it looks earth’s energy stores are depleted now and average temperatures on earth will probably fall by as much as what the maxima are falling now. As per Lord Monckton’s graph, we already fell -0.1K. I estimate we will fall about -0.2K in the next 8 years and a further -0.2 or -0.3K from 2020 until 2039. By that time we will be back to where we were in 1950, more or less…
Mr. Oldberg, in a further characteristically confused comment, says I am not being nice to him when I say he is characteristically confused. Tough luck. If he continues to address to me his doubts about the use of long-established, standard statistical techniques that he should really address to the IPCC, and if he continues to do so in a whining, carping, bossy tone, and if he continues rebarbatively to repeat his confused argument that I am assuming linearity in a stochastic dataset when I am manifestly not doing so and have told him that repeatedly, then he must expect not to be treated as a grown-up any more. He should really go away and learn some elementary statistics before waffling on about his off-topic statistical prejudices.
If Mr. Oldberg does not like linear regression analysis, then let him write to his nearest professor of statistics and propose a new and better way of establishing trends in stochastic data subject to considerable uncertainty. His latest confused comment confirms, yet again, that he has not even the dimmest understanding of what linear regression is or what it does. For a start, it does not assume linearity. Linearity is an output from the technique, not an input to it, as any schoolboy would know, so it cannot be an assumption, now can it? Mr. Oldberg’s fatuous insistence that linearity is an assumption when it is by definition an output and not an input of linear regression is not adult.
Likewise, Mr. Oldberg absurdly twitters that I am assuming that the mean of the members of a time-series “varies linearly with respect to time”. Bilge. The mean of a set is its mean, and that is that: it is, unless otherwise specified, the sum over the entire set divided by the number of members in the set. It varies with respect to variations in the membership and values in the set, and not with time, except to the trivial extent that as a time-series gets longer there will be more members joining the set and thus possibly altering its mean.
It ought to be blindingly obvious even to Mr. Oldberg that, since the new members of a dataset can take various values, only a halfwit would assume that the values would always be such as to allow the mean to change at a linear rate, particularly since the datasets in question are stochastic.
He also spews nonsense when he says that members of the set are missing. Hogwash. The datasets mentioned in the head posting each contain monthly values. Each value is a member of the set. The basis for compilation is explained in the reviewed papers that describe the datasets. Let him read those papers before expatiating unlearnedly upon their methods.
He compounds his fatuity when he says that in saying the warming over the past 18 years is statistically indistinguishable from zero, I am referring to “the time rate of change of the population mean and not to the actual temperature”. Codswallop. I am referring to the linear trend on the data, which is the unique line that minimizes the sum of the squares of the absolute values of the residuals (which are the differences between the data points on the line and the data points in the set). Though the mean of the entire dataset is indeed an input to the calculation, that mean does not change over the period, for linear regression treats the period as a whole, as even Mr. Oldberg ought to know.
And of course I am not referring to “the actual temperature”, but to the rate at which the temperature changes over the period.
He wails that the temperatures in the datasets are not the only temperatures that might have been measured. Welcome to that element in the uncertainty in the data that arises from incomplete spatial coverage. It is explicitly allowed for in the uncertainty values in datasets such as that from the Hadley Centre and CRU that was the subject of the head posting. However, if he is not happy with the data themselves, he should address himself not to me but to those who compile the data.
I have only scraped the surface of Mr. Oldberg’s bottomless ignorance in answering a few of his nonsensical, speciously academic-sounding points. He may like to go away and spend some useful time reading an elementary textbook of statistics. That would save him from further confusion, and from the inevitable embarrassment that results when he parades that confusion here with chirruping, pointless, off-topic persistence even after he has been repeatedly corrected.
In any event, the purpose of the head posting was not to discuss whether the IPCC ought to have used linear regression, or whether the data were all that they might be, but to explain that the IPCC had drawn an improper conclusion from the slopes of the multiple linear trends that it determined from a single dataset. Mr. Oldberg’s confused maunderings have nothing whatever to contribute to that topic. In future, I hope the moderators will tell him that if he wants to go off topic he should go away and troll elsewhere. And I am glad that, on this occasion, he came to the party late enough not to succeed in derailing the thread as he has so often done in the past. One hopes he is not one of those who are paid to try to disrupt this website.
Let him now go away and play in a sandbox more suited to his invincible ignorance. He will not be welcome here again until he has learned some elementary statistics.
Monckton of Brenchley:
Your claim that I am ignorant of elementary statistics is false and an example of an ad hominem argument. In a science blog such as this one, ad hominem arguments should be avoided as they are irrelevant to the scientific issue but capable of leading readers to conclusions that are false or unproved.
Contrary to your claim, linearity is a premise of linear regression analysis rather than being a conclusion from it. In concluding that the slope of your regression line is insignificantly different from nil, you take this premise to be true. If you have an argument for it being true, please share this argument with us.
Terry Oldberg: You’re making this too confusing. The IPCC said global warming is accelerating. Monckton said, according to all temperature sets, it is not accelerating. Yes – we all know there is not global temperature. But the data that exists, obviously does not hint at accelerating temperatures.
Simple enough?
Mario Lento:
You misunderstand the conclusion that is at issue between Monckton and me. It is Monckton’s conclusion that there has been no statistically significant global warming in the past 18 years.
Terry Oldberg: This is an interest aside. Using the same data that was used to show warming was accelerating prior to 18 years ago, that same updated data shows no acceleration for the past 18 years. I don’t have a problem with that notion.
Mario Lento:
How do you define “warming”?
Mr. Oldberg complains that I have questioned his knowledge of elementary statistics. Given the large number of elementary errors he has made in this thread, I drew the charitable conclusion that he is ignorant rather than willfully wrong. For instance, he again asserts that linearity is an assumption that is input to a linear-regression analysis rather than a result that is output from that analysis, and asks me to explain my position. But I had already explained it, and in some detail. Linear regression is a well-established statistical method by which even stochastic data (i.e. non-linear data) are used as the starting-point for an algorithm whose result is a straight line.
The straight line is a representation of the trend in the data. If there are considerable uncertainties in the data, as there are with the global temperature record, then linear regression is less inappropriate than any higher-order polynomial fit. And, as I have also had to say before, if Mr. Oldberg wishes to challenge the IPCC’s use of this standard statistical technique, then he should address his challenge to the IPCC and not to me. On the basis of linear regression the IPCC has drawn various conclusions about the rate of global warming, including the conclusion that there has been no warming for 17 years. If Mr. Oldberg wishes to contest that conclusion, then let him address himself to the IPCC’s climate-science chairman, whom I cited on the point in the head posting.
Mr. Oldberg is disingenuous in trying to maintain that he disagrees with me. He disagrees with the IPCC, with its chairmkan, and with every textbook of elementary statistics, and is quite unable or unwilling to provide anything other than pseudo-academic gibberish as justification for the nonsensical notions he espouses. He will not be permitted to derail any future thread with his baseless waffle about linear regression. If he really thinks he knows of a better way to represent the trend in a stochastic dataset, then let him write a constructive paper about it rather than whining pointlessly and ineffectually from the sidelines. We have all been very patient with him until now, but he continues to pay no attention to what he is told, and offers no science in support of his position, whatever it may be.
One understands that true-believers in the global warming nonsense are upset at the continuing failure of the planet to warm at anything like the predicted rate. But they would command more respect for their viewpoint if they were to debate the science honestly and competently, rather than mendaciously, confusedly and, worst of all, aprioristically.
you are funny, too,
Terry Oldberg says:
May 24, 2013 at 12:41 pm
Mario Lento:
How do you define “warming”?
++++++++
Warming is a relative term. Your question is not precise and I do not want to get into a dumb argument with you, where you tell me I assumed something.
You need to ask me the question in term of times scales. Warming measures temperature (as opposed to energy). I could say it warms every day during day time. I could say it’s warming from Feb through August. In the case of the past 18 years, warming has been from near zero to near slightly negative. In that time frame, which is what is being argued, warming is certainly accelerating.
Good enough?
Mario Lento:
Thanks for taking a stab at providing the meaning that you attach to “warming.” It sounds as though it is identical to Lord Monckton’s meaning. In a specified interval of time, one fits a straight line to the global temperatures. If the slope of this line is positive, it is “warming.” Otherwise it is not. Due to sampling error, confidence bounds must be applied to the slope.
When elements of this procedure are translated into statistical terms, shortcomings of it are revealed. Points along the regression line are sample means and they converge toward population means as the sample sizes increase. Thus, the procedure implies that the population means vary linearly with the time. This assumption cannot be tested, though, as at virtually all points along the regression line, the global temperatures are unknown. Thus, to assume linearity is incompatible with the scientific method of investigation.
In the above description, I’ve used the term “population” in reference to the set of global temperatures in an infinitesimal span of time. The “sample mean” is the mean value of the global temperature in a specified interval in a sample that is drawn from the population which is associated with this interval. The “population mean” is the mean value of the global temperature in a specified interval in the population which is associated with this interval. An “infinitesimal span of time” is wide enough to hold an infinite number of global temperatures.
Correction from my last sentence on May 24, 2013 at 1:40 pm: It should have read:
In that time frame, which is what is being argued, warming is certainly NOT accelerating.