They played fast and loose with the figures -NOAA whistleblower
The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.
A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.
The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.
But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.
It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process – which Dr Bates devised.
His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a ‘blatant attempt to intensify the impact’ of what became known as the Pausebuster paper.
His disclosures are likely to stiffen President Trump’s determination to enact his pledges to reverse his predecessor’s ‘green’ policies, and to withdraw from the Paris deal – so triggering an intense political row.
,,,
In an exclusive interview, Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, who was until last year director of the NOAA section that produces climate data – the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) – of ‘insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximised warming and minimised documentation… in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy’.
Dr Bates was one of two Principal Scientists at NCEI, based in Asheville, North Carolina.
Official delegations from America, Britain and the EU were strongly influenced by the flawed NOAA study as they hammered out the Paris Agreement – and committed advanced nations to sweeping reductions in their use of fossil fuel and to spending £80 billion every year on new, climate-related aid projects.
The scandal has disturbing echoes of the ‘Climategate’ affair which broke shortly before the UN climate summit in 2009, when the leak of thousands of emails between climate scientists suggested they had manipulated and hidden data. Some were British experts at the influential Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
…
Dr Bates retired from NOAA at the end of last year after a 40-year career in meteorology and climate science. As recently as 2014, the Obama administration awarded him a special gold medal for his work in setting new, supposedly binding standards ‘to produce and preserve climate data records’.
Yet when it came to the paper timed to influence the Paris conference, Dr Bates said, these standards were flagrantly ignored.
The paper was published in June 2015 by the journal Science. Entitled ‘Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming
…
In the weeks after the Pausebuster paper was published, Dr Bates conducted a one-man investigation into this. His findings were extraordinary. Not only had Mr Karl and his colleagues failed to follow any of the formal procedures required to approve and archive their data, they had used a ‘highly experimental early run’ of a programme that tried to combine two previously separate sets of records.
This had undergone the critical process known as ‘pairwise homogeneity adjustment’, a method of spotting ‘rogue’ readings from individual weather stations by comparing them with others nearby.
However, this process requires extensive, careful checking which was only just beginning, so that the data was not ready for operational use. Now, more than two years after the Pausebuster paper was submitted to Science, the new version of GHCN is still undergoing testing.
Moreover, the GHCN software was afflicted by serious bugs. They caused it to become so ‘unstable’ that every time the raw temperature readings were run through the computer, it gave different results. The new, bug-free version of GHCN has still not been approved and issued. It is, Dr Bates said, ‘significantly different’ from that used by Mr Karl and his co-authors.
Dr Bates revealed that the failure to archive and make available fully documented data not only violated NOAA rules, but also those set down by Science. Before he retired last year, he continued to raise the issue internally. Then came the final bombshell. Dr Bates said: ‘I learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure.’
The reason for the failure is unknown, but it means the Pausebuster paper can never be replicated or verified by other scientists.
…
…
He said he decided to speak out after seeing reports in papers including the Washington Post and Forbes magazine claiming that scientists feared the Trump administration would fail to maintain and preserve NOAA’s climate records.
Dr Bates said: ‘How ironic it is that there is now this idea that Trump is going to trash climate data, when key decisions were earlier taken by someone whose responsibility it was to maintain its integrity – and failed.’
NOAA not only failed, but it effectively mounted a cover-up when challenged over its data. After the paper was published, the US House of Representatives Science Committee launched an inquiry into its Pausebuster claims. NOAA refused to comply with subpoenas demanding internal emails from the committee chairman, the Texas Republican Lamar Smith, and falsely claimed that no one had raised concerns about the paper internally.
Last night Mr Smith thanked Dr Bates ‘for courageously stepping forward to tell the truth about NOAA’s senior officials playing fast and loose with the data in order to meet a politically predetermined conclusion’. He added: ‘The Karl study used flawed data, was rushed to publication in an effort to support the President’s climate change agenda, and ignored NOAA’s own standards for scientific study.’
Last night Mr Karl admitted the data had not been archived when the paper was published. Asked why he had not waited, he said: ‘John Bates is talking about a formal process that takes a long time.’ He denied he was rushing to get the paper out in time for Paris, saying: ‘There was no discussion about Paris.’
Read the entire extraordinary expose by David Rose here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4192182/World-leaders-duped-manipulated-global-warming-data.html#ixzz4XlWgDL48
USHCN data forms a large chunk of the GHCN. You didn’t know that?
You don’t know that there are thousands of kilometers between surface stations in many parts of the World ?
Go and look at the RAW data. You will see that nearly half is marked as ‘E’ for estimate. Stop replying and go and look for yourself and the original data before it is processed. This is why the surface data does not match the satellites and balloon datasets.
Did you never look at the RAW data ? you cannot claim to be a competent scientist unless you do.
Watts Up with That has covered this in the past. Did you really not know about this Mr Stokes ?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/27/approximately-92-or-99-of-ushcn-surface-temperature-data-consists-of-estimated-values/
“USHCN data forms a large chunk of the GHCN. You didn’t know that?”
The former USHCN stations form a modest chunk of GHCN. But GHCN doesn’t use USHCN infilling. It uses the data as supplied on CLIMAT forms to go into the GHCVN unadjusted, and then that goes through pairwise homogenisation, just like elsewhere.
“Did you never look at the RAW data ? “
Yes. I do it all the time. I produce a monthly index , based on GHCN unadjusted, and ERSST. And so I know that adjustment makes very little difference.
Nick,
Never having traced this so I do not know, it seems that much Aust land T data was taken at nominal 0900 hours so TOBS should not apply., Do you know if somewhere along the trail there might be a TOB adjustment made in a global adjustment by any of the authorities? I’d be relieved if there was a definite ‘NO’.
Cheers Geoff.
Geoff,
As I keep insisting, the GHCN unadjusted data, and the BoM unadjusted that you can get here, are just that – unadjusted. I went through the BoM data for Melbourne, and checked a dozen or so old readings with old newspapers. They all lined up. If anyone really wants to claim that is not so, there is a simple remedy. Just find one entry, and an old newspaper, and show a discrepancy? Despite all the years of kvetching, no-one seems to have tried this obvious step.
“The former USHCN stations form a modest chunk of GHCN”
Really? The vast bulk of the stations are in the US and the GHCN’s historical data comes from the same data that forms the USHCN.
So you are saying that the estimate data in the USHCN has been magically replaced with unestimated data in the GHCN ? that’s a neat trick, how’d they do it ? Either the data are sparse or there is temporal infilling.
Furthermore, you have not addressed the sparseness of the sampling where there are thousands of kilometers between points in some regions of the globe. This is spatially sparse.
Yes, I’m aware of your site. It’s got the same kind of academic-grade scientific software I used to write when I did my PhD. The description of the ERSST you use says this
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/marineocean-data/extended-reconstructed-sea-surface-temperature-ersst
Infilled data are not ‘data’ according to the Scientific Method. They are ‘hypothesis’.
Only in climate (pseudo-)science do people think estimated data are worth anything. In astrophysics it would be lovely if we could just ‘estimate’ in extra-solar planets for our gravitational lensing discoveries, but everyone understands this is preposterous, except climate ‘scientists’. We also understand don’t exclude *natural* effects when we look for explanations for our observations (as the IPCC’s terms of reference do).
But then, climate science is not about science it is about the United Nations rent-seeking and Collectivist wealth confiscation, as Christina Figueres has admitted numerous times (as she lavish praise on the economic model of Communist China while calling its air ‘breathable’).
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism
The observational data for man as the dominant factor in climate variability (such hubris!) is simply not there. The true deniers pretend the GCM are an accurate reflection of reality when it is clear they are worse than even the low standard of most scientific software (I used to write such models, and scientific software is still far behind the State of the Art or quality and *accuracy*, despite what scientists tend to think).
Nick,
I have cross checked pages of handwritten also, with the same result. I checked against BOM CDO.
My query was about cross checks with a final product like those from GISS, NOAA, Hadcru etc. I can do this with difficulty through unfamiliarity, but no sense duplicating work that you seem to have done already. Have you already shown some day by day comparisons of BOM CDO with the internationals above, or is it hard to get daily data from these internationals at the stage it is ready for input to these?
Geoff
Nick re newspaper records,
Colleagues here have done much Trove searching and found frequent mismatch with BOM current records. Typically, if a comment is elicited from an authority, it will be dismissive, like the mismatch being caused by older, inappropriate equipment, or being too small to matter in the larger scheme.
I wonder if we are now at the stage of a comprehensive review to see if all these dismissed small errors aggregate to a figure of concern.
I can send you the newspaper comparisons once I get them from colleagues who did the searches.
Geoff.
Moa February 4, 2017 at 11:11 pm: Well said!
The supposedly raw data can no longer be trusted. NOAA flunkies have long put their thumbs on thermometers when reading alleged temperatures.
These are the same miscreants who put a new station in Death Valley, facing a southern-exposed cliff, because the perfectly good long-standing one wasn’t producing the desired results.
“…For heavens sake – you say that about GHCN and then link to a post about USHCN (no longer used)…”
“…The former USHCN stations form a modest chunk of GHCN…”
Said by the very same person 16 minutes apart.
Geoff Sherrington
On the subject of searching Trove for historic newspapers – it’s worse than we thought!
News Corp has removed much of their regional newspaper content from Trove and it is now unavailable online, even to a mate who is a regional editor.
Will be keen to see how your project goes – all the best!
How do you adjust estimated data, do you throw a dice? amazing that precision temp monitoring in a controlled room cannot get to a one degree accuracy.
RAW DATA is totally irrelevant to those who live in the world of models.
It’ll be amusing to read Monckton’s sarcastic take on this.
That may take a while. He’ll not respond out of whimsy, he’ll examine the data – at least that part of it made public.
Why is the “verified” data more than 0.3 C warmer for 2016 than 1998? I’m not sure it is that much more from some of the other data presented on this site and others.
I don’t think I would trust Hadcrut either since it seems to have reduced the 1998 El Nino that the sat data has as matching 2016. Even one of the intervening years looks as high as 1998. It is inconvenient to their cause to have a year nearly 20 years ago similar to today given the ‘unprecedented warming’ going on.
There is this little problem of Zeke Hausfather, et. al.’s paper from a few weeks back which confirmed that the ERSST4 record was good. Give it up guys, the pause or hiatus or whatever you want to call it is dead.
Based on my beliefs and information to hand I can confirm Earths moon (the bigger one) is made of green cheese.
The smaller one is really an alien probe sent to monitor human progress.
oddly building on quick sand does not suddenly create solid foundation , it merely results in unstable building .
Bill Illis,thinks it is NOT good:
” Bill Illis
February 5, 2017 at 7:05 am
So we move from ERSSTV2 to ERSSTV3 in 2009 and they adjusted the SST trend up by 0.3C. In V3 to V3b in 2012, adjustments of another 0.1C, The ERSSTV3b to ERSSTV4 in 2015 another +0.12C. That is 0.52C all together over just 6 years. And we don’t even really know what happened to the data in 2016 because noone knows where it comes from (some ships, ICOADs, where is the raw data).
How come none of that ever shows up in your charts Nick?”
You FIRST have to explain the adjustments,which always goes upward.
The real trick is they adjust older data *downward*. Then they correctly claim that “our adjustments made the average colder”. This is true.
What they don’t say, and this is of the utmost significance, is that the adjustment downward is correlated with time. That is, they adjust the older data downward. This produces a lower mean temperature, which they then crow about as camouflage for their subterfuge, but it increases the TREND in the data. Since the trend is the core of the debate these SYSTEMATIC adjustments to the data are done to try make the data match the model – when actual science is about doing it the other way around.
This is all explained because this is not about science, which is why the Scientific Method is not being used. This is about politics: the UN is ‘rent seeking’ with is ‘carbon pollution tax’ so it becomes independent of US funding (the US always blocks the UN’s Marxist wealth redistribution theft plans).
http://green-agenda.com
Now,
Thinking of adjustments more, one can count the simple number of them made upwards versus down; then next weight that by the number of adjustments that are of short duration versus going; then incorporate the magnitude of the adjustment in degrees. Some are big, like several degrees C.
I have never seen a study with duration and magnitude included but suggest that it would be quite illuminating.
Geoff
Shocking? Bombshell? Nah, just another extension of the MSM we’ve grown to know and loath.
“Factcheck: Mail on Sundays astonishing evidence about global temperature rise,” Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief, 2/5/17
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-mail-sundays-astonishing-evidence-global-temperature-rise
“I recently led a team of researchers that evaluated NOAAs updates to their ocean temperature record. In a paper published last month in the journal Science Advances, we compared the old NOAA record and the new NOAA record to independent instrumentally homogenous records created from buoys, satellite radiometers, and Argo floats. We found that the new NOAA record agreed quite well with all of these, while the old NOAA record showed much less warming.”
How many of those Argo floats had their data ignored when they showed cooling instead of warming?
About 1/3 wasn’t it ?
Mr Appell,
What about Africa where the temps are mostly estimated- is this an accurate way to measure or could estimations lead to a bias?
while the old NOAA record showed much less warming.”
Clever misdirection. That it shows less warming over its entire length in no way justifies the increased warming concentrated in the last few years to “erase” the “pause”.
As a former NOAA employee who filed two whistleblower complaints, I feel compelled to offer my humble opinions:
1. Dr. Bates should have spoken up long before now, as it was his duty to save the nation from misspending untold taxpayer resources based on flawed results. (Perhaps he was too busy with Downton Abbey. JK.) Now that he’s retired, there is not much danger to him, is there, except maybe from the smear artists employed by the CAGW cabal. Dr. Bates is not really a true whistleblower, as he is no longer associated with the organization. Try blowing the whistle while still inside, and see what happens – you will be called names to your face; you will be vilified; your reputation will be ruined; you will never be promoted; the administration will try to fire you, or at least demote you; you will not receive awards you deserve, or, if you do receive an award, it will be minimal and not commensurate with what should have been disbursed, and will only be issued to cover any appearance of bias.
2. Most if not all government employees are, or quickly learn to become, yes-men and yes-women for the sake of preserving their promotion potential, and to receive or continue receiving positive performance appraisals and the potential for awards and bonuses, deserved or undeserved. This is group-think at its worst. Fortunately for safe air travel, airlines are finally encouraging subordinate pilots and crew members to vocalize any problems they think are happening in order to prevent disasters. This kind of atmosphere needs to be instilled in our government agencies, instead of demanding, even tacitly, blind obedience.
3. As NOAA became more administratively bent toward the ideas of CAGW, I personally was pressured by my former supervisor (now comfortably retired himself) to destroy a binder that I produced for the office staff’s edification about studies concerning human-caused global warming versus natural climate cycles. There was really no convincing most of the staff members that the climate changes naturally anyway. They couldn’t admit natural climate variations in any case, as they blew with the prevailing wind from Vichy, er, I mean Silver Spring.
4. Whistleblowers are not protected by the watchdogs specifically designed to do just that. Inspectors General should also be looking at the efficacy of entities such as the Merit Systems Protection Board, which from my observation has been put in place to cover up the myriad misdeeds of the agencies and their parent Departments, not to protect employees. In many cases, the MSPB is part of the problem, not any kind of solution or help to beleaguered employees.
5. All NOAA managers and administrators need to pass mental health testing, especially regarding Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Too many narcissists at high levels have, and are, selecting like people for their subordinates. Cronyism is rampant within this agency, and has contributed to the lowered level of effort, results, morale, and overall operational status.
6. NOAA has been corrupt for decades. It worsened early in my career, with the advent of our Politically Correct culture mirroring society overall, and the installation of non-scientist administrators. It is vitally important that this event described by Dr. Bates be widely disseminated to the appropriate watchdogs, such as Senate and Congressional committees as well as the White House, so they can move with vigor to investigate and correct these misdeeds, for misdeeds they are. The administration and hierarchy of both NOAA and NASA over the past two decades need to be thoroughly investigated with a fine-toothed comb to reveal systemic corruption and malfeasance, not only in the climate-related arena, but in all phases of their activities, especially including personnel (mis)management.
Would be interesting to hear more about your experiences.
4caster – this is very good stuff. Do you think that you could work up a full post for WUWT? Or maybe two? Your language skills are obviously up to it. The time is right for these sorts of disclosures. Many of us would be intrigued to hear a few details about how your whistleblower complaints were handled.
+1
Woo-woo-woo (sound powered telephone call-up)
“Engine Room”
“Bridge here. Sea water temp please”
“Same as last time, sir”
“Thanks. Bye now”
Variable Variability’s devastating rebuttal of Rose’s claims: http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2017/02/david-roses-alternative-reality-noaa-Karl.html
These scam artists just won’t give up and accept the truth.
O’rly?
Heh, another fox with the keys to the hen house.
This all seems eerily familiar, somehow.
Remember, just a few months ago…..
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Fascinating, predictable but not new. The watermelon foot soldiers were busy all about prior to their escargot fest in Paris. Down under in Dunedin, NZ, the Dunedin City Council who prides itself on following UNEP divestment strategies stepped up to the Paris promo soap box with climate change attribution blather centered on urban reclaimed coastal marshland being inundated by rising sea levels. A quick check of land subsidence and local tide gauge measures showed the facts, that together with an assumptive and possibly intentional dereliction of duty, potentially failing to clean flood water sumps and operate flood water pumps properly, thereby permitting a perfectly timed pre-Paris flood. Niccolò Machiavelli himself may well have been proud.
I bet John Bates is already desperately trying to dissociate himself from David Rose.
Too late John. You are now and forever on the WUWT pedestal.
You too…
…but at the base
Words like ‘devastating, astonishing,’ etc. no longer work in this regard, in the same way ‘settled’ never did.
Watts, Curry and like-minded fellows have steadily dragged the Overton window toward public acceptance of the climate science community’s failures. If Trump’s White House succeeds in nudging it the rest of the way the whole house of cards may collapse.
Will collapse? It was never a house. It was models, all the way down.
Oh, the _scam_. Still gonna disagree. Not will collapse, is collapsed. Paris was nothing. The Chinese agreement was nothing. Even spending however many trillion they said was nothing, would still have changed nothing.
“There is not there, there.” And never was.
David Rose has produced many excellent articles in the MoS. Long may he continue the fight against the Climate Change Scam and the Renewable Energy Scam.
“Then came the final bombshell. Dr Bates said: ‘I learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure.’”
Really? I work in computers and it is VERY rare a computer cannot be resurrected and you can even transfer drives to another one and run them again.
Can we spell sabotage? Can we spell criminal charge…?
“MarkMcD February 4, 2017 at 11:38 pm”
Would like to see that after a head crash.
Still recoverable. Requires specialist equipment and skill.
Plus, any organization not running automated backups should have its administrators shot – after several days of well-deserved torture, of course.
Claiming a lack of backups means a drive head crash destroys data is complete bs. Every professional organization has backups, data retention policies, Disaster Recovery policies. Only amateurs think otherwise.
“Moa February 5, 2017 at 1:12 pm”
If you had seen some of the head crashes that I have seen in my time, then no equipment or skill will recover the data. I say this with confidence as I have seen head crashes that, literally, fill the disk enclosure with material scraped off the surface of the disk platter itself.
you mean like ‘accidentally’ storing high powered magnets next to , or ‘accidentally’ sending the machine to the crusher without taking its data out first ?
You do have ti out quite bit of effort into having a situation where nothing can be recovered .
Moreover, the GHCN software was afflicted by serious bugs. They caused it to become so ‘unstable’ that every time the raw temperature readings were run through the computer, it gave different results.
This sounds familiar – similar to the scandal of non-repeatability that has exploded in the life sciences, that is, medical drug discovery research especially involving molecular genetics. Attempts to replicate the highest impact papers fail more often than not. Scientists involved admit that their complex and sensitive experiments give different results with each run. This opens the door to cherry picking the results most to the liking of the author – a fraud that is easy to hide among the voluminous minutiae of the experimental method.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/future_tense/2016/04/biomedicine_facing_a_worse_replication_crisis_than_the_one_plaguing_psychology.html
The graph showing the warming comparing NOAA and the MET office has ante at the bottom stating 0=14 degrees the worlds average temperature.When I was at school about 55 years ago we were taught that the worlds parameters on average were 14.7 C @ur momisugly 1013 Mb. I was then involved with aircraft it is my recollection that engine performance for take off was rated at these parameters. If perchance the standard has been reset by the global warmanists, they have shifted the goal posts to make things scary.
There’s a 5 letter word in the dictionary for data fiddlers like Karl or Mann: quack.
Do it in the financial sector and they have another word for it.
Convict
Didn’t see an increase in convicts circa 2008.
I expect our new POTUS has another 5 letter word for it.
Fired.
You are being too generous:
Quack = a person who pretends who professionally or publicly, to skill, knowledge, or qualifications he or she does not possess.
These people do posses skill, knowledge and qualifications and knowingly deceiving their employer and that being the past and present governments, the word could be ‘tr…..’
Trump should name Bates to head NOAA. He knows the ropes. And the employees there won’t be able to credibly gripe that they’re being muzzled by a skeptical political appointee for political reasons.
hmm, maybe what he’s angling for, good move on his part.
What, you don’t think he is an alarmist?
Another drive-by. You don’t identify who “he” is in your comment. You don’t state why “he” is, in your possible opinion, an “alarmist”.
Questions for you.. The Earth was once a glowing hot ball of magma. Has it cooled since? Andy evidence it won’t continue to cool? Was the Arctic Ocean once a swamp? Was the Eemian Warmer than the Holocene?
So…will the paper now be retracted?
NOAA needs to publish a retraction.
It’s not on the Guardian webpage so I don’t believe it.
Funny! But true too…I mean, where is Griff? Out for a walk?
Huh, 335 comments in 9 hours, almost a comment every 90 seconds. Is this a record for any WUWT thread?
[No, the first few climategate (email releases) threads ran to several thousands in only a few days. .mod]
“We bury our dead,” said a gunner, grimly, though doubtless all were afterward dug out, for some were partly alive.
This is from ‘A Little of Chickamauga’ by Ambrose Bierce. Please note this was chronicle, not his fictional, and overpowering, ‘Chickamauga’.
===============
No
I fill sorry for Nick Stokes
[But will he really feel better when filled right up? Or when left empty? .mod]
That’s funny. I put it to a deficiency in the brain power (evolved with a 100% phonetic language) to make distinction between the words that sound ‘nearly’ the same but are spelt differently.
You should start pronouncing fill and feel in a different way if that would help your spelling? I have learned English as a written language and tend not to make those mistakes. The downside is, they tell, I have too much ll in fill.