WUWT readers may recall that on June 4th, 2015, WUWT published a scathing criticism of the paper by Karl et al (“Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus”) that purported to erase the pause in the surface temperature record by applying some highly questionable, and apparently desperate adjustments to SST data. I still stand by this initial critical work of Bob Tisdale and I: NOAA/NCDC’s new ‘pause-buster’ paper: a laughable attempt to create warming by adjusting past data.
![animation-2[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/animation-21.gif)
It seems that other climate scientists on the “proponent” side have taken note of this chicanery.
Andrew Montford writes at Bishop Hill:
The US CLIVAR project publishes a newsletter/cum journal, a recent issue of which was dedicated to the hiatus in global warming. Featuring papers from a variety of well-known climatologists, I was interested to see the headline article, from Gerald Meehl, which seems to take a fairly hefty pot-shot at the data tweaking approach adopted by many climatologists.
There have been recent claims that the early-2000s hiatus…was an artifact of problematic sea surface temperature (SST) data (Karl et al. 2015), lack of Arctic data (Cowtan and Way 2014), or both. Such claims indicate that when corrections are made to SST data, by taking into account various measurement methods that introduce biases in the data, then “there was no ‘hiatus’ in temperature rise…[and] a presumed pause in the rise of Earth’s average global surface temperature might never have happened” (Wendel 2015). Often there are issues with observed data that need adjusting – in this case such claims of “no hiatus” are artifacts of questionable interpretation of decadal timescale variability and externally forced response – not problems with the data. Thus, the hiatus is symptomatic of the much broader and very compelling problem of decadal timescale variability of the climate system.
Whether Meehl is any more correct than Karl is anyone’s guess though.
And there were others, previously:
Climate scientists criticize government paper (Karl et al. 2015) that erases ‘pause’ in warming
WUWT was also critical of the adjustments applied by Cowtan and Way in this article:
Cowtan and Way’s ‘pausebuster’, still flat compared to models
as was Dr. Judith Curry:
Curry on the Cowtan & Way ‘pausebuster’: ‘Is there anything useful [in it]?”
It bears repeating that any metric that purports to give the temperature of Earth, be it shonky surface data or indirect satellite microwave emission measurement is a statistical construct full of choices made by the authors. Users of such data tend to think of these as absolute measurements rather than the estimates with wide error bands that they actually are.
Some, are more uncertain than others. When you get fun results like this…
…one wonders if the surface temperature record is now so uncertain that it is essentially little more than a political tool with most of the science adjusted out of it.
History is the only thing that changes and the future is certain. The past changes due to Warmist. The future is certain due to Warmist. Otherwise, history is certain and the future…not so much!
Dude, you just turned my brain in Silly Putty with that!
and to think….just 15 years ago they were all crowing about how accurate their temperature measurements were
Well, one thing gives you relief…..in another 15 years this reconstruction will be wrong to.
…right Mosh?
one wonders if the surface temperature record is now so uncertain that it is essentially little more than a political tool with most of the science adjusted out of it
Of course it is, even the Warmistas know this, after all, they do the adjusting..
The thought occurs to me that to be a ‘Climate Change deni*r’ is equivalent to being a deni*r of photosynthesis. Funny old world (as someone once said).
No one denies climate changes.
The whole denier thing is a complete straw man.
“Will you sleep with me for 50,000 pounds”
“Certainly”
“Will you sleep with me for 5 pounds”
“I am not a common whore”
“We have already established that, we are merely negotiating the price”.
No one denies that climate changes. No one denies it has changed a little bit in the last 60 years.
Or that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have changed a little bit in the last 60 years.
The debate is over whether or not the two are correlated, and whether or not the climate causes the Co2, the Co2 causes the climate, or whether its anything to do with burning stuff that used to be free atmospheric CO2 before the carboniferous era…
And most importantly whether its anything to be concerned about and there is anything we can do about it,.
And the overwhelming conclusion to the only two important questions is ‘no’.
“…one wonders if the surface temperature record is now so uncertain that it is essentially little more than a political tool with most of the science adjusted out of it”.
For those of us paying attention, there is no longer any “wonder”.
Has the supposed average temperature of Earth ever been anything but a political construct? Is it actually useful, or does it just provide taxpayer-funded employment for people who might otherwise be pushing brooms?
It’s obviously useful to some, but it has no physical meaning.
Using estimates to determine global temperature changes is not the issue. The issue is the estimates have such wide bands of error that they are open to every kind of bias including most predominately confirmation bias. Or as a climate scientist might think to themselves, “I know the earth is warming at an alarming rate so my algorithms and data adjustments are not accurate unless within the bands of error they demonstrate significant temperature increase.”
This is probably not what climate scientists say they think, but it certainly appears to be how they think.
“Using estimates to determine global temperature changes is not the issue.”
It is the entire issue, that no one seems to care about. There is no global temperature.
The problem is that calculating energy flows to the high precision demanded by CAGW is impossible. The catastrophic 2.5 degree change is less than a 1% change in absolute temperature. When the uncertainty caused by humidity is included the actual energy flow is impossible to calculate, especially not to extremely high precision that is regularly expostulated. CO2 levels are measured in ppm, temperatures are shown as accurate to .05% or better when simple glass thermometers are used. This is a complete fraud. Future generations will look back on us in shame for how easily and completely we were fooled.
I’m still waiting for the 1930’s to be truthfully represented (raw data please).
I hope you’re not holding your breath…
“Whether Meehl is any more correct than Karl is anyone’s guess though.”
When they present a single line as a “global” whatever, then no, they’re not even telling us anything worth listening to.
“…one wonders if the surface temperature record is now so uncertain that it is essentially little more than a political tool with most of the science adjusted out of it.”
I did a WUWT trick at home and took historical data of the most prominent stations in Israel and put it on a graph.
Not surprisingly, In rural stations, for the last century (90 years to be exact) there was almost no trend to be found. In other stations which are located in fast urbanizing places (sadly, Israel is becoming almost one big urban piece of land) there was a clear trend of UHI effect of about 3C.
And as in other places, people think I’m pulling their leg when I’m telling them that.
And here too we have those trumpeting gloom and doom in the media every chance they have.
Uh huh. We all know about Dr Karl and his agenda driven crew. And for a long time now.
Has anyone been tracking the number, frequency, and extent of temperature adjustments being made over time? Especially within the last 5 years. I think it would be an interesting set of data to present and graph. I don’t know what it would show, however, my intuition tells me that it would be an interesting indicator of the desperation of the alarmists. I am thinking of a new metric – the “alarmist desperation index”.
Steve Goddard AKA Tony Heller https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/ and Paul Homewood https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/.
http://www.elcore.net/GISTEMP_Overconfidence_Intervals.html
What is the “average temperature” of an ice cube at 0 degrees and a bathtub full of water at 20 degrees? There is no scientific or thermodynamic basis for “average temperature” it’s a statistical game. Even when dealing with air temperatures, the energy content of humid air is much higher than dry air. Since temperature is being used to determine the amount of excess energy on the Earth’s surface, the non-scientific use of averaged temperatures of disparate substances is useless and even fraudulent.
10 peanuts and 20 pumpkins have an average of 15. 30 peanuts and 0 pumpkins also have an average of 15. The average temperature of ice at 0 degrees and water at 20 degrees is also 15 and just as meaningless as averaging pumpkins and peanuts.
A very dramatic example of the disconnect between temperature and energy is seen on the sea ice page on this website. Look at Arctic temperatures when the temperature is close to the freezing point of water, the temperature volatility dampens considerably and the top of the sine wave flattens noticeably. It takes a lot of energy to melt ice and even though the long days are pouring lots of energy into the Arctic, the temperature barely moves because the ice absorbs massive amounts of energy.
CAGW stands on two pillars, the greenhouse effect and average temperature, neither of which is supported by science. It’s time this fraud was exposed as statistical nonsense masquerading as science.
All you really need to say is that temperature is an intensive property.
And a more humorous approach: Cowtan and Way – The Magician’s ‘Red Scarf Trick’
An important thing to realize is that these are government statistics and like all government statistics they are agenda driven. Over time, they will drift away from reality and will be worthless for any scientific research. This has already happened for economic data.
The thing that got me interested in doing my own series.. was the skeptics version of the global record.
yup. it was warmer than CRU.
no government
open data
open code
warmer than CRU
created by skeptics.
Mostly forgotten, cause you guys didnt like the answer
“The thing that got me interested in doing my own series.. was the skeptics version of the global record.”
/////////.
Steven, please post a link to the skeptic’s version of the global record.
I have never seen one, and I doubt that one exists since skeptics are not funded by government, big green, or big oil, and therefore do not have the financial wherewithal to collate and review the data, process it and create a record of global temperatures/temperature anomalies.
If you are unable to post a link to a record prepared by skeptics then I would suggest that you withdraw you incorrect and misleading comment.
i
I second the request for evidence of your claim.
I think he is referring to http://berkeleyearth.org/
Correction: most likely this https://stevemosher.wordpress.com/?s=moshtemp
@ur momisugly Michael Palmer October 28, 2015 at 5:57 pm. That is probably what he means by his “own series”. I don’t see anything there “created by skeptics” unless I missed it.
There is a skeptic version of GISS here and it shows less warming.
http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/SciMattG/GISS-corrected2_zpssymskhge.png
The “experts” love their models, so they have compensated the thermometer readings to reflect their bias. Like all good politicians, though behind their curtain of a white lab coat, we know they are lying if we can see their lips moving.
The fact of the matter is to adjust the data randomly in the error range and get the same result in the illustrated graph are millions to one against. Not one can replicate the changes because there is no science involved. Therefore it has been deliberately changed to what the people wanted it to show. Numerous changes in other surface data sets are larger than the error claimed in them, so there is no doubt this is deliberate confirmation bias based only on human changes and nothing related to science or errors. There is no science involved in it, it’s just a magical statistical show deliberately tampered for the cause.
Related – his item is now on the Drudge Report:
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/258375-agency-wont-give-gop-internal-docs-on-climate-research
One may gather from this file at the Wayback Machine that as recently as 15 years ago NASA didn’t even pretend to know Global Mean Surface Temperature before 1950.
https://web.archive.org/web/20001206235400/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
My interpretation of the link you provided is that NASA is giving detailed information for the base period selected to calculate temperature anomalies. However, what is interesting is that while they list temperatures to the nearest 0.01 C, they round off their base period average to 14 C, which is a change from the previous estimate of 15 C. So, they have lowered the base period average and thus all subsequent anomalies will be higher. How do you make a ‘mistake’ of 1 C when you are averaging temperatures with two significant figures to the right of the decimal point?
I don’t think so. Compare it, say, to this file from two years later, and we can see that the filename and the format of the data table is the same, but now we have all the way back to 1880.
https://web.archive.org/web/20021201114805/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
As to your other observation, see the last Q&A on this page:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html
“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.”