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.
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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.
De-funding climate hysteria seems like a good idea.
I work in an industry which is $75B a year growing to $170B a year by 2020 – and we don’t have the budget for regular industry-wide trips to Tahiti, Paris and what not for “conferences”.
It is abundantly clear just from this that “climate science” is far more about schmoozing with politicians than it is about actually accomplishing scientific or technical work.
“observational data that underpins climate models,”
Oxymoron?
The climatocracy is in full blown hysterical panic mode. The IPCC, in it’s actual science, already agrees that not much bad is happening
It is only the rent seeking political hacks, and those obsessed with the apocalypse who are rejecting the science. And as for refusing to share data, well there is only one side in this that has a record of destruction or suppression of data, and it is not the skeptics.
If the underlying observational data had been properly released and disclosed, this wouldn’t be a problem. Now they may pay the price of hiding the data behind “proprietary” claims and FOIA obstructionism. I’m finding it hard to be sympathetic.
OT — when I worked for the U.S. government, my buddy and I talked about coming in on a weekend and turn one of our servers into a “Doom” server. (We never did that, and our talk was pretty much tongue-in-cheek). We both liked to play Doom though (at home, of course). We really were busy at work.
The most fun I ever had on a computer was playing “Doom” with a friend over a dial-up modem.
We played it for fun.
These guys play computer climate “Doom” for profit and power.
If I were them, I’d not worry about getting the next IPCC report out, I’d worry about the IPCC and the UNFCCC even existing in a year from now.
I don’t think they have a full appreciation of what just happened in the US election.
I believe the U.S. provides about 25% of the UN/UNFCCC/IPCC funding. Will China/India/EU pony up the difference if President The Donald follows through on his pledge to get us out of climate change agreements?
The legal requirement for us to leave the IPCC because of the Palestinian admission, ignored by President Obama, could be a big factor to be considered by President The Donald. Might conservatives in the U.S. Congress be all over this in the future?
Professor David Karoly is a darling of the Oz media. In my guest post here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/08/great-barrier-reef-bleaching-study-karoly-et-al-april-2016-part-a/ in which he took the lead out of five authors as an expert on mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. Their study reached kindergarten conclusions that nevertheless went globally viral. Here is an extract:
“It is not the first time that Karoly has taken the mantle of co-authorship in a field where he apparently has zero expertise, seemingly in order to advance his mantra of CO2 driven planetary doom. For instance, he was co-author in a UniMelb biology paper ‘Early emergence in a butterfly causally linked to anthropogenic warming’ that found from unnatural hatchings in a lab that when the data were transcribed to the temperature record for Laverton, (a declared UHI affected suburb of Melbourne) the poor creatures would be emerging ten days too early.
For your entertainment I quote from his email reply to me on some issues that I raised in his role as a biologist [spelling error o not e]: “…our study on the temperature trends and the changes in phonology of the common brown butterfly…” In effect he was declaring that increasing levels of CO2 were changing the voices of the butterfly and when I teased him on it he claimed it was a typo, although if he intended e instead of o they are far apart on qwerty keyboards. Oh, and many readers may be aware of the ‘Gergis et al’ hockey-stick saga.”
Lose the data? Heck, Trump should open source the entire GISS/NOAA temperature analysis software and data, as well as all historical data sets. After all, the taxpayers paid for it.
I really want to see what the 1890-1990 temperature trend looks like for every temperature set release SINCE 1990.
Just to be clear…
Are we talking about the raw data? You know, the data that is no longer available and is believed to have been permanently deleted.
The “value-added” data that was adjusted from the raw data? You know, the one where all the adjustments aren’t identified.
The “new and improved” data? You know, the “value-added” data that has been further adjusted. With all the “new” adjustments hidden.
As far as I’m concerned the only the raw data has any value.
Well said “ScienceABC123”. If only Trump will reprogram the annual 100 billion expenditure to something useful. Like a new effort to build a modern superconducting tokamak in the USA with $5 billion or so, (ARC anyone?) and send the rest to reducing the deficit and paying off the Debt.
The next IPCC report does not matter because the science is already settled. All future funding for the IPCC or for climate research in general should be eliminated because the science is settled and there is nothing new to be learned.
“climate change denier Myron Ebell”
I’ve done a lot of web searching, but have not found where Myron Ebell has denied that climate changes.
What I think I hear them saying is that “Myron Ebell denies the value of spending trillions of dollars trying to snuff out tiny deltas in the levels of an atmospheric trace gas whose link to any kind of catastrophic change in long-term weather is tenuous at best and is not well supported by the data”.
That’s what I think they mean by “denying climate change”, but I could be wrong.
David Karoly is a part of the group which includes that well known scientist Tim Flanney, the expert on the tree kangeroo of Papua New Guinea. Flannery was appointed by Julia Gillard as a Climate Commissioner, and he saId “The rains which will fall will never reach to the ground” or words to that effect.
As a result the Labour Premiers spent millions on De-sal plants, most of which are now mothballed.
In fairness Perth does have a water problem so may need them, and Adelaide at the end of the Murray,. with all of the States upstream taking what they can get away with, we may one day need it.
But as is normal in Australia we have dry spells then we have floods, it has always been so, long before CO2 became the fasionable thing to jump up and down about. And right now those dreadful things called Dams are mostly full.
Michael Elliott
There was never going to be another IPCC Report . One of the main players is too busy fighting off sexual harassment allegations and the real honest scientists won’t be used again .
As mentioned, it was Hillary’s “Home Brewed” Server(s) that were the issue
Any person that wishes to be called a scientist must ensure all their experimental data is kept safe. To be negligent with archiving all your data ensures that you are not a real scientist but just a mere amateur tinkerer and should be stripped of your professional position.
Sounds great to me. Trump will shut down Junk Science production world wide!
Good grief… I could write the next IPCC assessment myself. We all going to die.
Think about this: The US government employs thousands of people under its (our) mandate for environmental and climate protection. Do we ever wonder what all of these government employees are doing for us?
There are just a few “faces” that front for NASA, NOA, EPA, etc., that purport to speak for the thousands of governmental analysts.
I had the opportunity to glom over the “grey literature” from EPA, NSC, and many other three-letter Federal agencies for my PhD background research. What I found was just blaw, blaw, blaw, WITH NO ESSENTIAL CONTENT WHATSOEVER.
We have allowed the Federal Government to pad itself with thousands of non-productive employees that contribute nothing to the USA as a whole. In DC, these non-productive Federal employees are being paid up to $300K – $ 400K for essentially doing NOTHING.
This must be terminated.