This quote from ETH Zurich is actually from another just published post, but it is so grating, so anti-science, that it deserves its very own thread to highlight it.
Here it is:
If the model data is corrected downwards, as suggested by the ETH researchers, and the measurement data is corrected upwards, as suggested by the British and Canadian researchers, then the model and actual observations are very similar.
Gosh.
This is like saying:
If we take all our economic projections for performance as suggested by our financial models, and correct it downwards, and at the same time, if we take all of our revenues and expenditures that are in the red, and adjust them upwards, out company will be on track and our investors will be satisfied.
Except, people go to jail for that sort of thing.
This is the same absurd reasoning that has been prolific in ‘climate science’ for at least the last 8 or 10 years… probably much longer. I’m just a poor old North Carolina (hillbilly) engineer but statements like this (mostly on the ‘RealClimate’ website) were what caused me to download the Vostok ice core data and do my own analysis. That led me to the ‘dark side’ (i.e., Steve McIntyre’s ‘Climate Audit’, Anthony’s ‘Whats Up With That’, etc.). Thank the lord there are still a few rational people out there. The King’s obvious lack of clothing is finally starting to get a bit embarrassing, even for the media, and draw a crowd.
“If the model data is corrected downwards…”
Gosh, I learn something new every day!
Yesterday, I wasn’t aware that computer games produced data.
“Yesterday, I wasn’t aware that computer games produced data.”
Of course they do, how else could they keep tract of your progress in the game.
More seriously, there is a qualitative difference between information and data. Take a random number generator, get a lot of numbers from it and dump them to a file and you have data. It isn’t useful for anything, so you couldn’t call it information, but it’s still data.
It would seem that in CAGW Climate Science the scientific method involves changing …er… adjusting both reality and virtual reality every decade or so to match the cause of an imagined reality.
Sort of like rebooting your computer and pretending the virus is gone.
milodonharlani says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:45 am
philjourdan says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:33 am
They need to correct more than their “data”. The models themselves are all wrong.
Expect the next IPCC report to conclude with 99.99% confidence that that CACA is much worse than thought,
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Agree; the CACA is already knee deep. I’ll need hipwaders if it gets any worse.
MattS says:
August 19, 2014 at 2:12 pm
“More seriously, there is a qualitative difference between information and data. Take a random number generator, get a lot of numbers from it and dump them to a file and you have data. It isn’t useful for anything, so you couldn’t call it information, but it’s still data.”
Tsk. Assuming your random number generator generates true random numbers – not pseudo random numbers – the data it generates are not only of maximum entropy, therefore of maximum information density (assuming they are white noise here) – but they are also extremely useful; as you can use the sequence generated as a one time pad for perfect, unbreakable encryption. The only complication is bringing a copy of the one time pad to the recipient in a safe manner. If you manage that, you’re set (for as long as the transmitted information does not exceed the length of the one time pad – you transmit it bitwise by XORing it with the bits in the one time pad).
I have read many articles at WUWT and comments by posters and frankly, this is the first time I heard about color temperatures when referred to absorption bands and greenhouse effect, I am more familiar with wave lenghts, but anyway, I’ll bite.
-73 celsius is, as you said, very, very cold, just 5 degrees less and CO2 will precipitate as a white solid. So, if it ever those temperatures are reached, it will be during the winter, as in no sun in the horizont. So, where is the radiation coming from?
Besides, as per Steig et al Nature paper (2009) Only the peninsula in the Antarctic is warming. But Steve McIntyre discovered that the reason of the warming on the peninsula was that the temperature records of the station called Harry were messed up. Mistake that nor Steig et al, neither Nature’s reviewers couldn’t catch. So, the question still remains, why only the arctic?
And, like others already pointed out, if it is only the Arctic what is warming, then is not global, and if the models have to be corrected downwards then the warming is not catastrophic, which is the position many skeptics are holding.
urederra says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:22 pm
“The sun does not shine in the Arctic for half of the year and receives little radiation on the other half.”
Actually the high latitudes receive quite a lot of incoming solar radiation (aka insolation) during their high sun season. Near the Equator the daylight (~12 hours) is approximately the same year round while near the Poles it approaches 24 hours during the high sun season. The results are surprising to most folks when first looking at the numbers. Try this site (figures 2 & 3) for a start:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/6i.html
I think what they meant is model results, not “model data”.
The slip is endemic to climate science debate; climate data used interchanably with Climate model ouput is a core fault. The notion that model experiments are the same as data is delusional. A model cannot prove itself, though in the Orwellian science debate, apparently they can.
Model results have to be proven by comparing the results with empirical data or another model known to be accurate. Here is the problem, the models do not give reasonable projections of temperature. You can’t prove against an accepted model because it does not exist. More telling is the empirical data so far proves the models wrong. Sure you can shake the widget. vibrate the sprocket and get the data to come in line with existing emprical data, but that ain’t projecting anymore, is it. Anyone with integrity would admit they were wrong, and then go back to the drawing board, not state they were right but just missed a few things. The climate scienc eequivlent of “the operation was a success but the patient died”.
The only thing proven is that climate scientists are incapable of projecting future temperatures never mind proving manmade CO2 is a global crisis of unimaginable proportion and cost.
There are some people that really should have not been given a computer – “To err is human to really foul-up you need a computer.”
If the model data is corrected upwards, as suggested by the BULL researchers, and the measurement data is corrected downwards, as suggested by the DUST researchers, then the model and actual observations are even further apart!
JohnB says:
Yes. Ad hoc bullshit.
From people who have chin straps spanning their buttocks.
Yes, they are absolutely correct. Here is the math for it.
2+2=5 … you just have to correct it a bit.
Eamon.
urederra says:
August 19, 2014 at 3:14 pm
“I have read many articles at WUWT and comments by posters and frankly, this is the first time I heard about color temperatures when referred to absorption bands and greenhouse effect, I am more familiar with wave lenghts, but anyway, I’ll bite.”
See Wien’s displacement law.
“-73 celsius is, as you said, very, very cold, just 5 degrees less and CO2 will precipitate as a white solid. So, if it ever those temperatures are reached, it will be during the winter, as in no sun in the horizont. So, where is the radiation coming from?”
It won’t precipitate due to the low partial pressure. The radiation is of course the infrared radiation emitted by the (icy) surface. As the energy emitted rises with the 4th power of absolute temperature (Stefan-Boltzmann law), blackbody radiation from a blackbody at 200 K is about 5 times weaker (in Watt/area) than from a blackbody at 300 K (which would be roughly room temperature, well, a warm room, at 27 deg C.).
In the dark of winter at the poles, the air being delivered from the tropics (containing CO2) is warmer than the ice at the surface (which is radiating to space). The CO2 that collides with N2 and O2 will radiate at the temperature of the air. That radiation gos both toward the surface and toward space. The radiation from the CO2 at the top of the atmosphere will go mostly to space because the CO2 below it will absorb and re-emit in both directions. That which is able to reach the surface is re-emitted upwards and the surface stays colder than the air above it. In the winter there is very little water vapor in the atmosphere at the poles to complecate these processes.
urederra says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:22 pm
My comment was with regard to the fact that these researchers claimed there were no weather stations in the arctic, which is certainly not true. It’s even more absurd when you think of just the past 20 years (the approximate duration of “the pause”). Do these people really think no one has monitored temperatures anywhere above the arctic circle?? Really???
Of course we could say the same thing about the oceans. Until recently, there were no “permanent” weather monitoring stations (like the Argo buoys) over vast areas of the oceans – just ships passing transiently in the main sea routes taking approximate temperature readings. Yet somehow, we can claim to know the evolution of ocean temperatures over the past century…
At this point in the CAGW scam, why do they even consider changing the numbers? Since they stopped doing actual science years ago, why don’t they just go straight to the desired outcome? “If we just assume that what we imagine matches what really happens, we can confirm our conclusions and justify our grant money.”
Balancing the mental budget is never easy.
One has to raise his delusions and lower his integrity then everything wrong can be right.
Some day, the forensic auditors will be analyzing the temperature adjustments and everyone currently working at the NCDC will have to face the music of a ruined reputation for all time.
I’m just saying, someday there will be a Republican President and a Republican Senate and House and the game will be over.
If I just adjust a few of my lotto picks and then adjust a few of the numbers drawn… I’ll take my winnings in a lump sum please.
The cult has now entered the bargaining stage, after their initial stages of denial and then anger. Next comes depressing and then acceptance. Yet if a massive and youthful backlash kicks in, their acceptance stage will be painful too, and the whole intellectual/academic left wing of politics may go down with them.
I wonder if these esteemed scientists are on a grant or other government stipend to create this wonderful conclusion.
Where are the so-called academics who should be calling out this stuff what it is: anti-intellectual witch doctoring?
Academics are quick to claim the right to manage their own affairs through “peer review” and other generally accepted mechanisms. However, academics have plainly failed to demonstrate the backbone required to manage this ridiculous situation (CAGW).
Let me see if I have this about right. (I apologize in advance for readers who are not familiar with baseball.) Suppose someone predicted that between 2009 and 2014, the number of home runs would increase by 6%. This would be analogous to MET predictions that half of the six years past 2009 would break the 1998 record. Things were not looking good, so Hadcrut4 was invented. This could be analogous to moving the pitcher 10 feet further back from the batter. Things still did not look good, so further adjustments were made to Hadcrut4. See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/12/met-office-hadley-centre-and-climatic-research-unit-hadcrut4-and-crutem4-temperature-data-sets-adjustedcorrectedupdated-can-you-guess-the-impact/
This might be compared to moving the pitcher another 10 feet further away.
Things still did not look good, so Cowtan and Way tried to come to the rescue. This might be compared to moving the pitcher still another 10 feet further away.
Of course, when the predictions were made, they only had Hadcrut3 and they knew its shortcomings. Hadcrut3 still has not broken the 1998 record and it still has not come out for June. I hope they are not trying to hide some sort of a decline.
The article says:
“the Arctic region in particular has become warmer over the past years”.
RSS goes to 82.5 degrees north
With the circumference of Earth being about 40000 km, the distance from 82.5 to 90 would be 7.5/90 x 10000 = 830 km. So the area in the north NOT covered is pir^2 = 2.16 x 10^6 km2. Dividing this by the area of the earth, 5.1 x 10^8 km2, we get about 0.42% NOT covered by RSS in the Arctic. So are they suggesting that this very small area has increased its very low winter temperatures by an amount large enough to warrant spending billions of dollars to prevent this from happening?
Bill Illis says:
August 19, 2014 at 5:29 pm
Amen! And we can start this fall in November to remove the out-of-control, left wing, progressives that plague our government. Sadly, zero funding the CAGW climate “research” machine will be a longer term project.
“If we take all our economic projections for performance as suggested by our financial models, and correct it downwards, and at the same time, if we take all of our revenues and expenditures that are in the red, and adjust them upwards, out company will be on track and our investors will be satisfied.”
That is word for word what John Perkins did for a living before he rebelled in disgust and blew the lid off with, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” and its sequel of confessions from other participating enablers.
The goal in those days was to induce poor and emerging countries into borrowing vast sums they would not be able to pay back with the inducement, “Build it and they will come.” Philippine and Indonesia were especially targeted. The same con is now being orchestrated on a vast scale to try to prevent the development of economic challenges from non-Western countries. The inducement is ‘green jobs’ and all that.
Well, it’s working well for Spain, isn’t it?
Translation: The “pause” suggests that our observations have always been wrong. And that our models have always been wrong.
Or, as any sane person would conclude, the “science” of CAGW is not just “not settled”…it’s always been wrong.
Hey, you can’t argue with this…it wasn’t written by Skeptics, and…it’s Peer-Reviewed!