Guest essay by Eric Worrall
An Australian climate scientist is concerned that President Trump might shut down US government servers which hold climate data being used to prepare the next IPCC assessment, which might prevent the next IPCC assessment from proceeding.
‘Everyone is vulnerable’: Trump presidency a risk to Australia’s climate science
A Trump presidency in the US could have serious impacts on Australia’s climate science and other research, with fears the cuts could be “CSIRO times 50”.
Donald Trump’s pledge to end US participation in the Paris climate agreement and expectations he will appoint climate change denier Myron Ebell to a key environment role has scientists bracing for fallout.
Australia’s climate research relies on many US programs, some of which have been targeted by the Republican-controlled Congress. President Barack Obama resisted cuts to agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration but he will leave office on January 20.
At the extreme end, a Trump administration could jeopardise global climate research efforts by withholding access to observational data that underpins climate models, with the output used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said David Karoly, an atmospheric scientist at Melbourne University.
“All the [Coupled Model Intercomparison Project] data is stored on US data servers,” Professor Karoly said, adding the US is the only place storing all that information.
Any interruption could mean the next IPCC assessment potentially doesn’t proceed, which “would be an enormous setback for climate science”, he said.
Others, though, noted that while earlier model data were singularly housed on servers belonging to the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the international Earth System Grid Federation now shares the load. The network is led by the US but has nodes elsewhere, including in Australia.
…
While I applaud US efforts to help David Karoly find his climate data, suggestions that a cut in funding would make access to data impossible seem a bit overblown.
We live in an age where data storage is cheap. For example, Amazon charges $0.02 / Gb / month for data storage, or $20,000 per petabyte per month (assuming no further bulk discounts are available) – more than enough hard disk for even the most bloated climate dataset.
If all the 20,000 climate participants in Marrakesh chip in a dollar each every month, climate data storage and access will not be an issue, regardless of US funding cuts.
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I knew the scientist would be Karoly before I even clicked on your link. He’s such a twat.
It takes one to know one
Yes, David Karoly, things do go missing …. missing ocean heat,
hot spot in the troposphere, weather records underpinning a
1990’s global warming, (Phil Jones @ur momisugly CRU, East Anglia) …
He needn’t worry, we are saving it for the legal proceedings…..
ROTFLMAO !!
” Trump administration could jeopardise global climate research efforts by withholding access to”
THE $$$$$$$$ RESEARCH FUNDING GRAVY TRAIN
that’s the real issue
But they have to make it look good
If they’re really worried about losing the data, they should just sext it to Anthony Wiener.
**snork** 😀
Climate models are not ‘underpinned’ by observational data, they are built up from “basic phyciss” , remember?
Neither is the sceptics, who this jerk journo at Sydney Morning Herald prefers to call deniers, who demanding archiving and open access to all observational climate data. It is pseudo-science activists like Mann, Jones et al who delete inconvenient data and declare that they would rather criminally delete the data rather than make it available for inspection and validation.
Projection much?
AH! so he’s not actually talking about observational data after all, he’s talking about synthetic “data” produced by broken climate models which underpin the manipulation of the observational data .
Adjusted data is worthless , models of adjusted data even more so , what is the problem ?
MODS, perhaps it’s time to remove the word denier from the comment filter. It’s a bit difficult to comment on a post which uses the term if we are not able to quote it or comment on it.
[good point . . . mod]
Karoly should be more concerned that Trump will force transparency … no more funding to hide data!
Someone send this handy tool to David Karoly, so he can access raw data.
Courtesy of Tony Heller
Pulling Back The Curtain Version 1.10
It isn’t about the cost, is it?
It is about whether a political decision might be made to stop collecting or publishing the data.
The surface temperature and sea ice data will continue to show a warming world.
this could be viewed at contradicting the viewpoint of the new administration.
As an additional factor many in the new administration would clearly believe the data was faked or misrepresented.
The only honest thing to do, in terms of science, is to keep collecting and publishing the current data. I hope all here who are interested in science will support and encourage that viewpoint.
If there is any doubt about the data it must be transparently investigated… which means an investigation team selected across the spectrum of views.
E.g just putting Lindzen on it would be biased to one viewpoint (and we need to keep non-scientists off the team).
“Griff November 16, 2016 at 1:30 am
The only honest thing to do, in terms of science, is to keep collecting and publishing the current data. I hope all here who are interested in science will support and encourage that viewpoint.
If there is any doubt about the data it must be transparently investigated… which means an investigation team selected across the spectrum of views.”
Except if your name is Phil Jones and you work at the UEA CRU where you can select the data and questions yourself and have only one view.
@Griff
I think your last couple of paragraphs are a reasonable solution, but it seems to me it’s unlikely to happen as it would likely be considered chucking good money after bad.
Besides, the data has been biased to one viewpoint for decades now, what’s wrong with a bit of balance? Nor do I suspect Trump et al hold beliefs much more radical than lukewarmers, it’s the gravy train and crippling of US commercial progress he’s more concerned about. At the expense of what? Almost daily threats from climate alarmists for the last 40 years or so that global disasters will start next year.
The public is bored sh*tless with it mate. The western world no longer believes anything bad is happening and the developing world only wants cheap energy to drag them out of poverty.
And if the msm were starved of scare stories they might have to do some work and actually report positive aspects of increased atmospheric CO2 and temperature like the planet greening by 14% in the last 30 years and the lowest incidence of US tornado’s since 1954, during “the hottest year ever”.
Like most of the planets general population, I’m not a scientist, but I would like the opportunity to see both sides of the argument, based on accurate data. That’s why I’m forced to visit sites like WUWT and Climate etc. which I resent. But it wasn’t them that induced my scepticism, I just didn’t think things could possibly be as bad as broadcast over msm, so I looked for some answers.
By constantly crying wolf, the alarmists have shot themselves in the foot. They have even made the incoming POTUS a sceptic, perhaps because he’s an optimist. But this is a good thing as we may now get to hear a balanced argument instead of being swamped with irresponsible, unrelated scientific studies of how too much home knitting impacts the climate, and it gets published because it has ‘climate’ in its title.
We have all had enough browbeating and the western world is breathing a huge sigh of relief, but won’t admit it because they are still crippled by the sandal wearing liberal leftist’s condemnation of them as heretics and Trump as an evil overlord. But that will change, if there’s one thing I have learned in life it’s that the lower one’s expectations are, things can only get better.
Your comment was a joy to read. Brilliant observations.
Thank you sir. I don’t get most of it because I’m not educated, but I would like it explained to me by people who do know. I suspect most of the population of the planet would like the same. I only retain a few facts I know are true:
1. CO2 is a trace gas (basic schoolboy chemistry, but I still had to look it up again 40+ years after leaving school).
2. Man’s CO2 contribution occupies 0.0004% (4ppm? right?) of all atmospheric gases so it’s incredibly diluted and whilst it’s a greenhouse gas, it’s still only 3% of all greenhouse gases, including, of course, water vapour.
3. No one understands clouds (water vapour).
4. After 40 years of research by thousands of scientists, with billions of $/£, no one has proven conclusively that CO2 causes temperature rise (outside a laboratory). Einstein proved relativity with a fraction of the resources. Isn’t proving AGW flogging a dead horse by now?
5. The planet is, right now, at around the coldest it has ever been in its history.
6. CO2 is around the lowest it has ever been in the planet’s history, and whilst both have been as low as they are now, it’s only now they coincide, never (meaningfully) in 65M years of researched history.
7. At 400ppm atmospheric CO2 we are only 250ppm away from the extinction of life on the planet (except I guess from microbes and bacteria).
8. We are 800ppm away from where plants go haywire and grow almost visibly.
9. A warm planet is better than a cold planet because we can irrigate with warm water, we can’t irrigate with ice.
10. A warmer planet will release billions of acres from northern hemisphere permafrost and allow cultivation and food production for a growing population.
11. A warmer planet will mean more evaporation of the oceans into the atmosphere depositing more rain.
12. Equatorial regions have both rain forests and deserts, there is no reason to believe temperature rise would encourage one more than the other.
13. When my wife and I moved into our house 25 years ago, the lawn needed cutting around once every two weeks, now I’ really pissed off that I have to watch her mow the lawn twice a week whilst I sip my Gin and Tonic.
14. Arctic/Antartic ice is only useful for cooling said Gin and Tonic. It serves the planet no other purpose other than as a research medium for scientists.
15. Polar bears will eat you, they are Brown bears in disguise.
16. Climate science works on averages. At no point in time will the average data represent the factual data other than by coincidence.
17. Scientist’s aren’t the problem here, politicians are the problem and the scientific community needs to get off its ars*, show some b*lls and defend their integrity. Uneducated miners did it, whey can’t they?
18. Scientists bear the responsibility of representing the uneducated masses. We uneducated masses bear the responsibility of making sure they are fed and housed in order to represent us in an unbiased, professional manner. We do our job.
Scientists will rip apart what I believe, but that doesn’t matter, There are billions that feel like me, there are only a few million (thousand? climate interested) scientists and if they can’t convince a dunce like me that they are right, then they are wrong. Perception is reality.
Cigarette packet science. Best I can do, sorry.
The data is faked and misrepresented already. C/AGW has done an excellent job of that. Whose going to be on the board to oversee transparency ? I know ! I know ! A peer reviewed panel. I disagree with C/AGW so somebody like me wouldn’t be on the panel. That’s what you mean. … ( and of course if I were, I’d be a token of one, with mental and psychological problems ) see how easy this is to fix !
You know what I haven’t seen in the last 15 years is whether 97% of all scientists still agree. You know what else I haven’t seen is whether the benchmark for 95% certainty that temperatures will be at a certain level at a certain amount of co2 is still valid. I think not.
Let me put it to you this way, I’m a skeptic. I can’t write a coherent paper because they keep scrambling the data. Mine won’t get published because of that. However, if someone else that uses doctored data supporting C/AGW, it’s glossed over and does get published. Just making an argument is difficult. The only solution I have is to shut it down. It’s become so political that I wouldn’t even know where to start to fix it.
And keeping Mann on it us institutional corruption. This entire gambit by the climate obsessed is a red herring. Only one side in this has been caught hiding, deleting, losing, adjusting, data. And it wasn’t the skeptics. Only one side of this has refused to share data, and it wasn’t the skeptics. This faux panic is a bunch of rent seekers worried about their rent. Trump has given no indication of how America will lead the way in ending the climate consensus social mania. The article we are discussing is simply guilty people worried about getting caught and looking to cover their tracks. Mr. Trump can’t start bringing rationality and integrity to climate science too soon.
Griff:
**The surface temperature and sea ice data will continue to show a warming world.**
Will?? Now you are making stuff up again.The REAL data show the facts – that it is not warming. That is why NASA cools the past and warms the last 20 years – to show “man-made” warming. Only Trump knows this of all the world leaders.
No Gerald, the real data shows it is warming and 2016 is the hottest year in the record.
the arctic sea ice data is transparently showing a continuing decline and record lows
Warmest year on record, Griff? Tell me, how long is your record?
No, Griff.
The “massaged” data shows 2016 as the hottest year – no one seems to know what the unadjusted data shows (even so, the planet is recovering from the Little Ice Age).
Since you’re evangelizing GOBAL warming, explain why total sea ice (arctic + Antarctic) is also at a high.
Let me translate that for you:
Hey, if Karoly and others are short of data, they can do what Harry did, remember,
“Here, the expected 1990-2003 period is MISSING – so the correlations aren’t so hot! Yet the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have :-)”
So they can do the same, just make it up !
Hilarious 🙂
No observational data underpins climate models. They are fiddled to try to match with climate models not underpinned- that would mean deleting your entire model and starting afresh.
Here’s a bit
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2016.png
Try again
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2016.png
Hmmm
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1611.msg93998/topicseen.html#msg93998
Tony, What is this?
It looks like the temperature at 90N in kelvins but looks to be stuck around day 100.
One more reason to keep climate data in a git repo. Unfortunately it does not only make possible to create as many local checkouts as you wish, but it also makes impossible to tamper with data retrospectively without a trace, a major drawback for enthusiastic activists.
Let’s save this graph:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
Save this too:
Save this one too:
I love this one. Put AGW religious zealotry into your scientific pallette and it’s pretty clear that correlation is causation in this case.
Obviously these global warmists have vivid imaginations in places other than climatology.
A typical case of a global warmist worrying about anything and everything. This is why we get all of these articles that predict negative future events backed up with nothing more than flimsy logic and never any data. What a pathetic life such people lead.
“This is why we get all of these articles that predict negative future events backed up with nothing more than flimsy logic and never any data. ”
Not really.
I’m pretty sure it’s the same reason Al Capone killed people to sell booze.
It’s the money.
We gather and store weather data. How does it become “climate” data?
First I read the banal ad hom “climate denier” label.
Then I see the name Karoly – a nutcase routinely avoided by many I know at Melbourne Uni – not necessarily because of his loopy alarmist nonsense … just because he’s a nutcase.
Finally I see the source – the Sydney Morning Herald.
When will all this extreme leftist alarmist propaganda cease to be treated as anything vaguely related to science?
One really big transparency initiative Trump can do, is simply make the Raw data more readily available.
Climate science has always made accessing the raw data so difficult that basically no one can be sure they have a geniune raw temperature database and its always so convoluted its impossible to be able to use it.
Some insiders are given better more useable ones and that is the problem right there.
What raw data ? Phil Jones, of the UEA-CRU admitting that it was lost, didn’t have enough storage space or some such rot. You can bet all the other raw data has gone the same way, and if it hasn’t, it won’t be long. BleachBit anyone ??
He admitted the raw data was lost in office moves in about the mid-1990’s. Which is a brave admission IMO because it means ANYTHING from then on is based on made up stuff. In the private sector, you’d be fired at best. At worst, be put in gaol!
Those servers are expensive. The new administration might wish to re-purpose them to store cat videos as a value-added measure.
Withholding access to the data won’t be the problem, matey-boy. When Trump provides unfettered access to sceptical scientists to scrutinize NASA/GISS and NOAA’s data-handiwork in full….THAT’S when you should be worried.
Perhaps the story reveals a more sinister plot. The warmists will erase the data to protect their lies and blame it on Trump. This is how they work.
Progressives do tend to “project” their own positions all the time.
Bring it on… though we need to be sure that those scientists represent all viewpoints and we can trust them to be objective…
when Berkley Earth went through the same exercise with skeptic funding they found no problems with the data, no bias due to urban heat effect and that yes it was warming.
I’d expect any honest examination of the data to find the same
You really ARE funny Griff. Comical in fact!
Who needs data? We have computer models, which are better than the data since the models are perfect whereas data is messy. Computer models can predict global temperatures for decades to come. Try doing that with data!