WUWT reader Peter Gadiel writes:
After reading of the critique of Sabine’s exclusion of the historical data on ocean acidification I emailed him. I thought his response might be of interest to you at WUWT. He says the earlier data is not of “sufficient quality.”
My question to him:
As a taxpayer who is helping to pay your salary I’d like to know why you are refusing to include all the data on ocean acidification that is available.
Sabine’s response:
Chris Sabine – NOAA Federal
12:31 AM (11 hours ago)
As a public servant that must stick to the rigor of the scientific method and only present data that is of sufficient quality to address the question, I am obliged to report the best evaluation of ocean chemistry changes available. This is what you pay me to do and I am working very hard to give you the best value for your tax dollar every day. I hope you are having a good holiday season.
The question that immediately comes to mind is:
Who determined that the directly measured ocean pH data was not of “sufficient quality” and if it wasn’t, why then did NOAA make the data available on their website as part of other ocean data in their World Ocean Database without a caveat?
My search on NOAA’s NODC database for ocean pH data showed plenty of data and no caveats on use:
So was Sabine’s decision arbitrary and without basis in fact? Inquiring minds want to know.
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Countdown till NOAA removes the data:
” …. why then did NOAA make the data available on their website as part of other ocean data in their World Ocean Database without a caveat?”
Just think of the thousands of scientists in the past who have dutifully, with some personal risk and hardship, made all these measurements. Not just Ocean ph, but Antarctic temperatures, very remote weather stations, conflict areas etc.
The modern climate scientists just throw out all that data. It is not something that should be condoned or considered honorable.
Climate scientists are in the habit of disregarding previous work. Too much of it contradicts their claims (and assumptions)
It seems that most of the data (ice extent, pH, temperatures, etc.) that are thrown out and/or are “processed,” go against the climate change/global warming narrative.
“The modern climate scientists just throw out all that data.”
Nonsense. They decided there wasn’t enough good data to compile a global average in those years. In fact, modern scientists have gone to a lot of trouble to organise that data in WOD etc. So folk here can get a million or so data points with a few clicks.
GISS starts its surface temperature index in 1880. But there are measured temperatures back to 1700 or so. Are they being thrown away? No, GISS doesn’t think that they are enough for a global index. That doesn’t seem controversial.
4 million years ago the pH of the oceans was much lower, around 7.4. All life went extinct at that time and we are not here.
+1
Sabine is just another practitioner of the climate scientists art of cherry picking. Roseanne D’Arrigo was the first to put this on record as reported by Steve McIntyre.
“D’Arrigo put up a slide about “cherry picking” and then she explained to the panel that that’s what you have to do if you want to make cherry pie.”
http://climateaudit.org/2006/03/07/darrigo-making-cherry-pie/
OK, I checked the NOAA database, to see how much pH data there was between 1885 and 1985. How much got thrown away? 3.5 million readings. Results are as follows:
Fri Dec 26 17:47:33 2014
COPY OF YOUR DATABASE SEARCH CRITERIA:
OBSERVATION DATES: Year from 1885 to 1985
DATASET: OSD,CTD,XBT,MBT,PFL,DRB,MRB,APB,UOR,SUR,GLD
MEASURED VARIABLES (extract): pH
3522718 TOTAL casts
Full (expanded) file size estimate (6520.3 MB)
Gzipped file size estimate (1553.9 MB)
NOTE: the file size estimates are for the WOD native format
Data extractions will take approximately 11 hour(s)
slightly different search, still lots of data (3.4 million observations) were thrown away:
Fri Dec 26 17:54:34 2014
OBSERVATION DATES: Year from 1800 to 1984
3395454 TOTAL casts
Full (expanded) file size estimate (6086.2 MB)
Gzipped file size estimate (1446.5 MB)
NOTE: the file size estimates are for the WOD native format
Data extractions will take approximately 11 hour(s)
“Who determined that the directly measured ocean pH data was not of “sufficient quality” and if it wasn’t, why then did NOAA make the data available on their website as part of other ocean data in their World Ocean Database without a caveat?”
read harder.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOD05/docwod05.html
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOD/pr_wod.html
“NODC is in the process of transforming operations to improve public access to archived oceanographic data and environmental information. A comprehensive understanding of user/customer requirements for oceanographic data and products will greatly assist the NODC Team in achieving success to meet their mission. Please take a moment to provide comments which will support NODC’s endeavor to optimize services. Thank you.
Sincerely, NODC”
One of the problems with providing open access to the general public is the general public ( folks who have never worked with the data before) generally requires a huge amount of hand holding to walk through the maze of quality control procedures.
So, if you provide the data quickly without this hand holding, then you get criticized for not providing instructions, caveats, etc. Think of it like this. Here at WUWT you post articles and let the crowd
“peer review it” And of course you get criticized for not exerting editorial control.
On the other hand if you only present fully QC’d data, you get blamed for “hiding stuff”
I find the same thing with satellite data. Tons of data but very complicated and detailed instructions on how to use it.. in some cases… and in other cases its buyer beware.
One of the problems with providing open access to the general public is the general public ( folks who have never worked with the data before) generally requires a huge amount of hand holding to walk through the maze of quality control procedures.
No, You are confusing data and results. The eyes from outside issue here is exactly the same as the temperature adjustments where older direct readings with calibrated instruments are adjusted down to accommodate modern theories of UHI. It makes me sad to think of all those people going out day after day for years even decades taking direct readings only to have someone 80 years later decide that they saw 33°F but it was really 31°F and they were just stupid hicks from the 1930s.
This time it is pH direct measurements that suffer at the hands of the “adjustors.”
The outside eyes aren’t asking to be trained as climate scientists to produce publicatons or congressional testimony. all the outside eyes are asking is why are you throwing away what appears to be perfectly useable data?
“On the other hand if you only present fully QC’d data, you get blamed for “hiding stuff””
Also, NODC is here explicitly acting as an aggregator. In their introduction, they say:
“WOD13 is a product based on data submitted to NODC/WDC by individual scientists and scientific teams as well as institutional, national, and regional data centers. A major contribution of NODC/WDC to the field of oceanography has been to provide centralized databases where all data and metadata are in the same format.”
Mosher does the same thing with temperature data in BEST. If he doesn’t like the data, he replaces it with theoretically derived data. He uses models to achieve this.
Now do you understand Mosher?
But you never say where. Neither you above nor anyone else answered my earlier question – where in fact does Sabine “use modeled data over real data” as the title claims? What are we talking about?
“Absolute precision in this area is the pursuit of the foolish, Those who massage the data (which will always be questionable) to fit their conclusions forget the first rule of data. You have to take the dogs with the cats.”
Ernest H. Wright for Leader!!!
I actually see what the “public servant” is talking about. Any data real, simulated, or otherwise that doesn’t advance the narrative is deemed to be of insufficient quality. So it actually makes sense in the totally corrupt world of “climate science”.
Absolutely. And by the same token, Sabine is not a true Scotsman, either. Quite the opposite.
Sabine isn’t going to have many friends now that he is busy having all their publictions removed now that he’s proven they used bad data.
So basically all the peers have wasted tax dollars for like a hundred years by never delivering data of sufficient quality until recently. Nice back-stabbing there…
I am no scientist.
But I am an historian
And I know that the Pesians lost to the Macedonians and one of the reasons was they did not have machine guns.
But the historical data is not that accurate
Therefore
The Macedonians had machine guns
If the excluded data had shown that the oceans were more alkaline in the past, would it have been excluded?
To ask the question is to know the answer.
cyanobacteria + CO2 = supersaturation
You can’t change pH without decreasing buffer first…it’s been constant
Was it Chris Sabine who said … ‘I was raised to be charming not sincere’
… or was it Chris Pine as Prince Charming ?
There must be published criteria for determining which data is of sufficient quality to use.
Has any of these folks done mathematical modelling of the real world when you can actually test your predictions against reality? Even in a simple situation like industrial chemical production, or horticulture or agriculture, you do not extrapolate beyond your data. Mathematical models are built to allow predictions of outcomes only within the boundaries of your dataset. Doesn’t everybody know this?
It may have been said before, but there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and, now, models.
Brilliant response…”Good enough for government policy”.
Policy based evidence manufacturing.
Perfect committee work.
[trimmed, off-subject. .mod]
While Ferdinand’s explanation convinces me that Wallace’s treatment of the data is without merit, it does not follow that within all the records available, that there isn’t some sub set that is stationary and of sufficient timeline to draw a trend line from. Include the error bars of course, the result may well not be useful. I just find it rather surprising that there is nothing in terms of data prior to the 80’s that any useful information can be extracted from.
David, I look at it this way…
They are trying to pass off 20 years of a cycle as proof that it’s been doing the same thing for 150 years…
…when we know the Nino/Nina cycles are more than that
David, there were several repeated research ships measurements over time following the same tracks, including pCO2, DIC,… and pH measurements. They may be used to give some impression of the change over time. Here for a cruise in 1994 and a repeated cruise in 2007/2008, be it not exactly in the same winter months:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/woce_p18n.html
but I suppose that more of them can be found. If they are accurate enough (measured, calculated) to see a change in pH remains a good question… The change in pCO2 and DIC anyway was established that way.
“As a public servant that must stick to the rigor of the scientific method”…
Wait – I thought it was SCIENTISTS who were supposed to stick to the scientific method. So, he’s a public servant first, then, maybe a scientist, who, to his way of thinking wouldn’t have to stick to “the rigor of the scientific method”. Oh, the agony of being a “public servant”.
So now the question is, if being a public servant requires him to stick to the rigor of the scientific method, when is he going to do so?
Inquiring minds want to know.
How does this guy live with himself?
I guess the other choice would have been to subject the data to 6 levels of adjustments. Naturally, the final answer would have been the same.
One other thought …. isn’t is possible Sabine was simply being realistic within his work environment. IOW, no other result would have been acceptable to management and any attempt by Wallace or anyone to come up with another answer truly would be career threatening. Some of these people may not have a choice in the politically driven environment within our current administration.
Could it be that the operative definition of “quality” is nothing other than a cheap Lysenkoist perversion of that concept?
Off thread but in the general area IMO
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/12/look-out-a-soil-model-says-more-plants-means-massive-carbon-stores-might-be-freed/
“requires a huge amount of hand holding to walk through the maze of quality control procedures” (Mosher)
IE all the adjustments needed to make the original data show what we want to make them show to “prove” we are correct!!!
Mosher’s point was the same as always: the public should almost never be allowed to see the raw data. After all, what do you think this is? Science?
If measured, raw data supports the team’s agenda, then shout it from the rooftops. If the measured, raw data does not support the team’s agenda then toss it out, “adjust it”, homogenize it, or just make crap up. After all, this is much like the comment that it does not matter who votes, only who counts the votes. (h/t to Stalin of the USSR)