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.
…
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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
Story hit the MSM in the Daily Mail in England. Elsewhere, nothing I can find. This story has been spiked.
That’s because it is a non-story.
Rose’s central graph is either a serious mistake or deliberate misrepresentation.
CAGW is a deliberate misrepresentation, Griff.
I find it unlikely that all climate science is a deliberate attempt to mislead, let alone the wilder reasons ascribed as to why the deception might be being perpetrated.
I find it unlikely that all scientists involved are just doing it for the grant money.
In particular, if there is no warming and no ‘unimproved’ evidence suggesting same and indeed if indications since the 1970s were of cooling and/or the world is cooling, then why on earth did scientists invent a warming trend -it seems to me they could then have got funded to document the (actual?) cooling trend in just the same way. With less effort…
Griff, perhaps you would like to tell us which parts aren’t a deliberate use to misguided and which parts are.
There has been some science done that contradicts AGW, it is never discussed outside of skeptical boards. Nor has it made its way into mainstream media or policy for determining courses of action at the national or international level. The contradictions are not insignificant or have no effect. They are major and are extremely relevant to the ” settled science”.
“I find it unlikely that all climate science is a deliberate attempt to mislead”
I find it unlikely that anybody actually doing Climate Science would ignore the Medieval Warming Period, the Roman Warming Period, the Minoan Warming Period, the Holocene Optimum, the entire Eemian inter-glacial, that the Arctic Ocean was a swamp 53 million years ago, and that atmospheric CO2 was 8000 ppm 500 million years ago.
Or that the Earth was once a glowing hot ball of magma, and that it has been cooling since.
We can be sure that Trump etc have been informed. It gives them the the leverage they need.
englandeichard, rest assured …. I think Trump knows 😉
https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records
Oops, sorry for misspelling your name.
Science Committee’s time-line of Karl et al.
https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/NOAA%20Karl%20Study%20One-Pager.pdf
Trump needs no leverage. He’s shutting off the gravy train. The CAGW meme in the US is dead.
It is also in the Times.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/politics-and-science-are-a-toxic-combination-706jm3hqv
Have just read that article, via The Australian, very interesting comment made within the article;
Anyone know anything more?
http://icarus-maynooth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/on-mail-on-sunday-article-on-karl-et-al.html
“I worked for three and a bit years in the NOAA group responsible in the build-up to the Karl et al. paper (although I had left prior to that paper’s preparation and publication). I have been involved in and am a co-author upon all relevant underlying papers to Karl et al., 2015.
The ‘whistle blower’ is John Bates who was not involved in any aspect of the work. NOAA’s process is very stove-piped such that beyond seminars there is little dissemination of information across groups. John Bates never participated in any of the numerous technical meetings on the land or marine data I have participated in at NOAA NCEI either in person or remotely. This shows in his reputed (I am taking the journalist at their word that these are directly attributable quotes) mis-representation of the processes that actually occured. In some cases these mis-representations are publically verifiable.”
Wow, but he knew it was a stinker, good man.
Everyone can claim this. Bates became very specific in the interview, so he must have known something about the “techniques” that led to the paper. And these unscientific methods are not rejected by the statement, or the writer does not go into the individual criticisms. But try in the fog candles. “Not involved”.
“not involved in any aspect of the work”
poor griff.. it appears that Tom’s co-writers were not involved in any aspect of the work. either
None of them had the code or the data.
amazing NON-SCIENCE… or should be NONSENSE.
“….. John Bates who was not involved in any aspect of the work”
Hi Griff
That is to his credit. If he was involved in the work and kept quiet about something he thought it was wrong, without taking a stand (even resigning) then his credibility would be questioned.
Your interpretations, right or wrong, are valuable contribution towards the more open communication between two opposing camps.
All the best to you and R. Gates.
Mods
it was only a matter of time before Griff attacked the scientist involved and started spewing his BS, how many more scientist are you going to let him lie about before you get rid of him?
Griff
go get eaten by a polar bear you creep.
Perhaps a counter based on science and observed evidence would be better than your reply above?
Only by responding to challenges to theory does science eventually stand.
Griff
“Only by responding to challenges to theory does science eventually stand.”
Then why do you continually lie about and slander good scientists who pose challenges to theory?
Your a fraud Griff, WUWT has plenty of reasoned people to defend AGW theory it doesn’t need creeps like you.
Bob
I have at times posted links to places where actual scientists question the publications of some skeptic and ‘arctic fauna’ scientists.
I have looked at the evidence and honestly believe those experts have a point… the science is wrong, the articles pushing it are misleading.
I note that climate scientists are routinely and roundly denounced in these comments are perpetrators of falsehoods. I haven’t done that: I’ve given you the links to where the science is questioned by the relvant experts.
Polar bears are choosy with the trash they eat.
Griff, please point to articles where Warmunistas intelligently debate why there was a Little Ice Age, why we had a reprieve, and why the Eemian was warmer than the Holocene.
Focusing on only the period since 1978 is not “Climate Science”.
Daily Mail has now corrected the caption under the controversial HadCRUT4/NOAA comparison chart, accepting that the baselines account for a spurious difference of 0.12 C between the values; however, it still hasn’t corrected the chart.
“Although they are offset in temperature by 0.12°C due to different analysis techniques, they reveal that NOAA has been adjusted and so shows a steeper recent warming trend.”
The “steeper warming trend” in question amounts to 0.026 C/dec difference between NOAA and HadCRUT4 over the period shown, an amount easily covered by the error margins in each series.
“Daily Mail has now corrected the caption under the controversial HadCRUT4/NOAA comparison chart, accepting that the baselines account for a spurious difference of 0.12 C between the values; however, it still hasn’t corrected the chart.”
The naming of different “analytical methods” corresponds to a typical nebulization and distraction from the core that Karl’s work refers to SSTs and Hadcrut4 on land + ocean. For this reason, a reply that the trend scientifically determined by Karl will be weakened by the consideration of Land + Ocean is still much more unscientific than the work of Charles, who has at least limited himself to the SST. This is a typical fogging action to distract from a fraud. It is also the case that land data, with Hadcrut and GISS, have been adjusted more and more over the years in such a way that a higher trend occurs during the proclaimed “CO2 time” and thus the theory of the AGW to underlie. Karl only joins the series of trend adjustments. With unscientific methods. The famous work was extensively rejected here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/29/noaas-new-pauses-buster-sea-surface-temperature-data-the-curiosities-extend-into-the-1st- Half-of-the-20th-century / And how to hear now, rightly.
Different baselines, yes. That explains some (perhaps most) of the difference between the two series.
However, I played around with the chart and scaled off the difference between the two series at 87 points along the 20-year period. Not very accurate because the lines are too thick to scale off with any precision. However, the difference increased over time, and fitting a straight line to it, I got this:
The difference between NOAA and HadCrut4 increases at 0.027°C/decade – that is to say that whatever rate of warming is deduced from the HadCrut4 series, the warming rate from the NOAA data would be greater by that amount.
IMHO, both series are too spiky (mostly due to the El Ninos) to tease a meaningful warming rate from them, but that has never stopped the warmists (or skeptics either, for that matter).
Small numbers, yes. Probably too small to mean anything, except that when 2016 was celebrated 0.02°C hotter than 2015, we were told that small numbers really do matter.
I noticed on the pausebuster chart that the 0 deg point on the temperature scale represents 14 DegC – the average world temperature. ICAO use 15 DegC for the standard atmosphere, which when I went through aviation training was taught as the average world temperature. I just wondered why the difference?
Over the period 1998-2016, the trend in New Zealand is negative at -0.0011 degC per year (or -0.01 deg C per decade, rounding to 2 decimal places). That is, close enough to zero.
This comes from our official source. It looks to be pretty close to the satellite record. It may have been somewhat different given that we are a range of mountains in the sea.
I am now having lots of fun with all our records, some dating back to 19th century. There are plenty of stations to work with. At first glance it looks as though NIWA’s calculation of around + 0.9 C over the last 108 years is pretty right.
Its the next 20 years that I am looking forward to.
The Media in general have ignored this while they trumpeted the pause-buster paper endlessly so it is an uphill struggle. There is no appetite or reward for folk to admit to being wrong. The charlatans keep getting away with upwards adjustments on the flimsiest excuses and it will happen again until the warmist activists are removed from positions of influence. Hence it is what Trump believes that is important.
Yet despite these NOAA manipulations there is still a consensus in the scientific literature that the pause exists and some warmist scientists have politely declared the crude NOAA adjustments to be not credible. Of course everyone knows this they just don’t like to be tarred as skeptics because they will lose their jobs! The mere fact that good data was replaced by demonstrably bad data in order to get rid of a troublesome trend is enough for honest folk to recognize there is chicanery afoot.
Peter Thorne has been striving to adjust radiosondes records to agree with models by various methods, including a wind speed proxy – this despite the fact that un-adjusted radiosondes had agreed with the satellites. This rot started with the Santer paper that used this modified (& truncated) data with inappropriate frequentist statistics to argue that the spread of observations and models were so wide that the uncertainty limits overlapped and hence models weren’t really so crap. Not only is it irrational to argue that crappier results lead to better models, but when you adjust multiple datasets upwards to argue that they verify your model then it is not science but just pure dogma. Why they do this I can’t say but it sure keeps the money rolling into what was once a backwater activity.
The Guardian has published a response to David Rose’s article without actually mentioning John Bates.
Mail on Sunday launches the first salvo in the latest war against climate scientists
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/feb/05/mail-on-sunday-launches-the-first-salvo-in-the-latest-war-against-climate-scientists
In the associated video M. Mann states that:
Climate change den..rs are akin to lions, while some outstanding AGW climate scientists are alike zebras.
Domesticated ‘zebra’ lost its stripes and it is better known as a donkey. Well said Dr. Mann.
No, the first volley was in November 2016. As a skeptic of the theory of the anthropogenic climate warming incidence to the office in Washington D.C. was chosen. This is only the beginning of the dissolution of the omerta that has prevailed so far among climatologists.
Drawing all their wagons into an ever decreasing circle. We live in interesting times.
I wanted to check out Tom Karl’s qualifications so Googled him. I was fascinated to see that William Connolley had already created a Wiki page about him and this controversy. Needless to say, it was typical Connolley, ‘d’-words and all. It was also noticeable in the edits how comments by Pielke and references to others were deleted, for example:
Already in the year 2000 Karl wanted to prove, according to the El Nino, that the global warming rate dramatically exacerbated. According to the only paper in Karl’s article listed in Conolley’s article in Wikipedia,
Karl, T.R., R.W. Knight, and B. Baker. 2000. The record breaking global temperatures of 1997 and 1998: Evidence for an increase in the rate of global warming. Geophysical Research Letters 27 (March 1): 719-722. (Press release)
This is probably his hobby. Yeah, such people need the land.
The term “El Nino” appeared in that paper, but they avoided to say that there was an El Nino in 1997-98.
Always amusing to read about the temp data. Even indoors and controlled conditions with high precision instruments it is hard to get accuracy to within 1C degree accuracy-
“Consider what you are trying to measure the temperature of. An example that seems simple at first is measuring room temperature to 1°C accuracy. The problem here is that room temperature is not one temperature but many. ( mostly estimated in Africa)
Figure 1 shows sensors at three different heights record the temperatures in one of Pico Technology’s storerooms. The sensor readings differ by at least 1°C so clearly, no matter how accurate the individual sensors, we will never be able to measure room temperature to 1°C accuracy.”
With NOAA able to estimate to tenths of a degree why don’t Picotech sub contract to them?
https://www.picotech.com/library/application-note/improving-the-accuracy-of-temperature-measurements
cont.
“Conclusion
High precision temperature measurement is possible through the use of well-specified and suitably calibrated sensors and instrumentation. However, the accuracy of these measurements will be meaningless unless the equipment and sensors are used correctly’
NOAA don’t even need temp stations in Africa.
Outstanding work NOAA.
This is the range within which the controversy lies.
That’s more than the highly beneficial natural warming since before the industrial age
Anybody know the reason why NOAA archives the v2 precip data but does not archive the v2 temperature data online? The web page refers to the climate temperature and precip data, but the FTP directory does not appear to contain an archive of the temp data:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/
That scandal dwarfs Watergate IMO.
Steve (Paris), Smart Rock, and Michael Palmer: Thank you for your kind words, but it would be personally unwise for me to provide further details in this setting. I would of course happily participate in any official investigation, e.g. Congressional.
Tim Ball: You stated that it is time for national weather agencies to close and be replaced by data collection agencies only, as they are consistently wrong. The real value in national weather agencies is not in day to day weather forecasting, but in the watches, warnings, and advisories issued for more dangerous weather. I liken this function to that provided by our military. As an old professor of mine asked (and I am paraphrasing), do we really want privatized meteorological, military and emergency management services? Specifically regarding weather, government operation would also preclude the possibility of conflict of interest, or even the appearance of conflict of interest, from sponsors and/or subscribers. The public/private debate has, of course, been longstanding, and will obviously continue as there are pros and cons for both sides. I would advocate not throwing out the baby with the bath water, but instead draining the (swampy) water, specifically in regard to NOAA and NWS. In my experience, private weather concerns have not been significantly better on average than government operations in day to day weather forecasting. Your mileage may vary, however.
I do not believe there will be very many additional whistleblowers as time moves forward. There may be a couple, but it is just too personally dangerous to do so for many reasons: financial, reputational, and personal are but a smallish subset.
You can see why there was resistance to the CDR process set up by Bates. Scientists have been using less than ethical tricks that would fail Bates’ quality checks.
Karl modifying the matrix ratings for data also outright fraud as it directed scientists to “gold” data when that data was never assessed to earn the rank.
There are claims Bates’ process was broken (won award for broken process?) but the truth was there was fierce opposition within NOAA to having such a quality controlled archived store of data because it can all be traced right back to every sentence in a paper published from the data.
They don’t care if someone 8 years from now, maybe (McIntyre et al) finds problems with their data. The funding was got, the kudos dished out, the political beast served. We know that past mistakes\malfeasance does not get punished in the climate science arena.
So Bates was the Whistle blower I heard about early 2016.
I did note Zeke immediately jumped to damage limitation mode but he’s tried to distract from the real issues and his response does not deal with the majority of what Bates says.
Maybe Zeke should explain why he warms station data from stations that have moved latitudes south that should see their data cooled significantly per degree latitude of movement.
This all reminds me of the FIFA corruption, they hired some lawyer to check them out for corruption. He was shut out, report ignored.
Bates was working to improve the quality of science produced by NOAA’s climate folk. Ignored, objected against, shut down. What’s left to do but retire.
As we know, you retire first then speak out if you value funding\career\sanity. No surprise there.
We know what this paper from Karl was the minute it hit the publishers. Politically solicited, politically managed and directed. Politically paraded, for Paris.
If anything this gives Trump and some in congress some real leverage here. NOAA need to be purged by the activists and funding scammers.
To think Bill Grey had his funding cut and this lot have an endless kitty! It makes me want to punch faces, stamp throats.. not literally 😀
*Bill Gray (RIP)
There is a lot written by many on the instability of the GHCN algo
You get very different results each time you run it, run it 50 times, and you might get 40 cooler runs, next 50 runs 45 hotter runs.
Is this how they did the K15 warming by simply doing runs until you get the desired results with a bit of mathemagics. “Test run test run.. (gets warmer).. Real real real real”
Correct me if I’m wrong, please.
I can not see the data that were entered into the model
I can not see the code used by the computer to process the data. It’s been destroyed with the computer
There were no back ups..
I can not inspect the computer used to process the data. It’s been fried beyond all recognition.
How can I know that Karl’s numbers came from a process rather than merely pulled out of (the air)?
I wonder why the article mentions computer problems with GHCN but does not mention ERSSTv4? I thought the main complaint about the GISS change attributed to Karl’s “pausebuster” paper was about having GISS switch from ERSSTv3b to ERSSTv4.
The fun part of all of this is that students currently taking science degrees have drummed into them the scientific approach and the importance of such ideas as reproduce ability and data quality and control .
They you get ‘professional’ like Karl that display less skills in this area than the students do and you wonder , is there actually any standards at all in climate ‘science’ ?
Mail on Sunday launches the first salvo in the latest war against climate scientists
David Rose penned an attack described by expert as “so wrong it’s hard to know where to start”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/feb/05/mail-on-sunday-launches-the-first-salvo-in-the-latest-war-against-climate-scientists#comment-92665141
No mention of Dr Bates!
It’s rising.
This topic is being featured on Rush Limbaugh today.
🏁
Karlgate/NOAAgate story has legs.
John
Except religions are not moved much by revelations of their key players, even when the documents are presented.
… And exactly *zero* news sites of the liberal media are publishing news on that. As is tradition.
If and when the fallout intensifies then there will be lots of damage control articles of “NOAA did nothing wrong”. Kind of like what happened during Climategate.
Outside of the skeptic blogosphere, no on has heard of ‘Climategate’. That was also a non-story.
More nonsense from Griff.
Outside of the skeptic blogosphere, no one has heard of ‘Griff’.
Griff, I can assure you that Climategate was not a non-story. The whitewashes that followed convinced nobody. The stance by some climate scientists, academia, the MSM and unconvinced members of the public has prevailed for years because conclusive evidence of fraud on the one hand or serious warming on the other is sadly lacking.
The final arbiter will be Mother Nature. Place your bets now. I tend to favour anything between cooling and gradual warming. Politically, I think the political climate has definitely changed. Trump has said that he will not support politicised science. Excellent, and the sooner that gets implemented, the better.
If Trump’s people are thorough, it seems to me that they will need a very large brush to clean out the stables. Honest science will get through in the end. I suspect that the climate change scam will last no more than five years.
Griff February 6, 2017 at 10:20 am
Outside of the skeptic blogosphere, no on has heard of ‘Climategate’.
Add all of President Trump’s Twitter follower’s.
Try to pay a attention, The President has referred to “Climategate”.
michael
The Grifter’s flat lie of the day. Climategate was an example of a mass media push to shove the sh** back up in the horse. If you didn’t hear about it, Grift, maybe it’s because you got shoved up there too. Who could tell the difference?
That comment is almost as brilliant as … “hide the decline”.
Whistleblowers are good when they blow the whistle on your political enemies and bad when its your friends. Is it any wonder that the MSM has lost all credibility. These are serious accusations of malfeasance in government service. They deserve to be investigated.
I apologize if this has been posted before, but Dr. Curry has posted a response to Bates’ critics at her blog site.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/06/response-to-critiques-climate-scientists-versus-climate-data/
Thank you for the link. A point by point response to critiques of Dr. John Bates assertions. Excellent read with promises of more details to come.