ClimateGate Rebunked

[kiryan]

and instead of pausing to consider the so called truth, instead he doubles down to form a new agency specific to study climate change. Now that would be cool if they would study it, but we all know it'll just be another group of "experts" hand picked to promote an agenda.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/0 ... 53541.html

[kiryan]

Hadn't heard this one before. from limbaugh. so that probably makes at least a 4th poorly documented to outright made up claim in the last 2 weeks.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/ ... guest.html

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report is supposed to be the world’s most authoritative scientific account of the scale of global warming. But this paper has discovered a series of new flaws in it including: The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company."

[kiryan]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/02/ ... es-hansen/

From the opinion page, but some interesting accusations...

1) NOAA has eliminated 75% of their weather stations which happen to be amongst the ones reporting the coldest temperatures. I'm sure they have valid scientific reasons for that, probably trying to conform them for easier comparsion, however, if I was studying global climate change, I'd keep all the weather stations I could and just choose which ones to include depending on the type of analysis. Well at least if I was a scientist doing science instead of pushing a climate change agenda.

2) The divirgence of satelite measured temperature and locally measured temperature. Since the 80s, there is a marked divergence with the local measurements coming out significantly warmer. There's probably a scientific answer like old sensors or certain types of heat being harder to measure, but its awful inconvenient that readings that use to be close are farther and farther apart in the direction that supports the global climate change theory.

====

In a January 29 report, they find that starting in 1990, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began systematically eliminating climate measuring stations in cooler locations around the world. Yes, that's right. They began eliminating stations that tended to record cooler temperatures and drove up the average measured temperature. The eliminated stations had been in higher latitudes and altitudes, inland areas away from the sea, as well as more rural locations. The drop in the number of weather stations was dramatic, declining from more than 6,000 stations to fewer than 1,500.

...

Their report provides examples of how the systematic elimination of stations and unexplained adjustments in temperature data caused measured temperatures to rise for Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. Many adjustments change what would have been a drop in temperatures into an increase. Take New Zealand, where D’Aleo and Watts note: “About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming.”

...

The D’Aleo and Watts’ report also helps answer some puzzling questions about the report. One of the major ones questions has been the divergence in temperature data recorded by satellites in space and down here on the ground. That difference was very small when satellites first started being used during the 1980s but has grown over time, with ground observations showing a rise in temperature relative to the satellite data. The urban warming effect may also explain why land warming has between so much greater than ocean warming.

[Ragorn]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010 ... 817577.htm

Key climategate researcher cleared of all wrongdoing.

"They were not falsifying data; they were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called 'trick' was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field."

/end thread

[kiryan]

LOL end of thread. Hardly. Mann is just one part of this even if he was cleared. You have the IPCC report riddled with push papers from environmental activists. What the hell do push papers with little or no scientific evidence have doing in a "scientific" report used to declare climate change is undeniable?

Also, Last I read, 3 of the 4 issues were cleared with one outstanding. Furthermore, by some accounts the "investigation" was cursory at best.

http://views.washingtonpost.com/climate ... s-col-blog

Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, said university's move shows the probe is "being set up as a whitewash."
...
"It's clear that they're not taking evidence or testimony from a wide enough range of people," said Ebell, whose think tank is funded in part by energy interests." It seems to me they're taking Mann's word for it."

(from another article I read, the recipients or senders of the emails weren't even contacted as part of the investigation).

(and the icing, Mann objected to having adminsitrators determine whether there were any scientific misdeeds...)

But it would not determine if Mann "engaged in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities."
...
University officials, Mann said, decided "a question like that needed to be addressed not by administrators, but by a committee of my peers who are in a position to judge that."

[teflor the ranger]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/12/2817577.htm

Key climategate researcher cleared of all wrongdoing.

"They were not falsifying data; they were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called 'trick' was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field."

/end thread

Yes, decline successfully hidden.

[kiryan]

"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change," said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC. The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

--A former "lead author" on the IPCC claims that research shows the "temperature record" used to establish global warming is SEVERELY flawed due to local non climate related physical environment issues such as changes in land use from a field to an office park, being physically moved, placed next to an air conditioner.

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report. The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

"We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC's climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialization and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias," he said.

--heres another right wing crack pot climate denier... apparently...

Such warnings are supported by a study of U.S. weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.

His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment. Some are next to air-conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous: a weather station next to a waste incinerator.

-- and another one. A weather station next to a waste incinerator, he also cites a station at an airport in the path of airplane exhaust.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/ ... cientists/


Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.

-- another professor of climate denying

Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of the chapter of the IPCC report that deals with the observed temperature changes, said he accepted there were problems with the global thermometer record but these had been accounted for in the final report.

-- acknowledge problems by another author of the IPCC report. (course he goes on to say but climate change is really happening and even though there are problems with this, we have other stuff too)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 026317.ece

[kiryan]

lol, im having what john stewart describes as "trying real hard to hide your boner" moment.

BBC interview with Phil Jones, director of the climate center that got hacked. In the interview he dodges a few questions, answers a few by pointing back to the IPCC's report, and acknowledges some interesting things that climate deniers are gonna love. Obviously this was a prepared response, not a live interview, so take that in mind. He had loads of time to say exactly what he wanted to say.

Question B: He agrees there is no statistically significant global warming since 1995 to present.
Question C: He states there has been a decline in temperature since 2002, but its not statistically significant.
Question G: He acknowledges there is a verifiable warmer period (than present) in many areas during medieval times, but cops out by saying we have no record of what was going on in other places so we don't know if it was global. So this "unprecedented" warming may have a precedent, but we can't verify it so we assume it wasn't.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

C - Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

G - There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

[avak]

I see how this does not coincide with your theory that climate change scientists are a bunch of idealogue zealots that cannot be questioned, but I really fail to see how this deviates from the stuff that has been officially stated for years and years. That would be: the scientific community has shown ample, but not 100% beyond any doubt proof positive, evidence that we are experiencing anthropogenic climate change.

I realize that the media and tinfoil-hatists want a simple up or down on the issue, but it just isn't like that.

I find this interview candid and truthful.

[kiryan]

The IPCC report has been cited as undeniable, unequivocal PROOF that global warming has happened because of human activity. You have Jones and Mann and a whole host of pro global warming scientists actively supressing dissenting opinions and refusing to fill freedom of information requests. There has been nothing reasonable about the conduct of so called pro global warming scientists over the last decade. Whether they meant to or not, they allowed hysteria to be stirred up based on their claims and leveraged it into billions of dollars in research dollars and have spun it into a big batch of bull called the IPCC report.

This is the first time I have seen a climate scientist of his caliber admit there is cooling, admit that there has been no warming trend over the past 25 years and admit that its possible the earth has been hotter in the past, and that it wasn't a result of human activity. 2 days ago, every liberal on this board would've called me a crack pot climate denier who ignores science had I made any one of those 3 claims.

[teflor the ranger]

That would be: the scientific community has shown ample, but not 100% beyond any doubt proof positive, evidence that we are experiencing anthropogenic climate change.

Problems:

Unanswered Question #1: Localized, Regional, or Global?
Unanswered Question #2: Percentage anthropogenic vs percentage all other factors?
Unanswered Question #3: If we cease all man-made climate change affecting activity, will there be any benefit whatsoever, if so, how much? 1%? 10%? 99%?

[kiryan]

regarding the predictions that sea levels were going to rise

Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall told the Guardian,, "It's one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science." A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study's conclusion.

in other words, complete fuking bullshit.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/ ... latestnews

[kiryan]

a good summary of what has transpired as a result of climate gate beginning with a Britian's premier climate change supporter the "met" office supporting starting over with climate data and making it open to public scrutiny and vigorous peer review.

Sure looks like climategate was rebunked. Great thread LOL

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/ ... imategate/

The stonewall began to crumble after a gusher of leaked emails revealed climate scientists, including the CRU's chief, Phil Jones, discussing how to keep controversial climate data out of the hands of the skeptics, keep opposing scientific viewpoints out of peer-reviewed scientific journals, and bemoaned that their climate models failed to account for more than a decade of stagnation in global temperatures.Jones later revealed that key temperature datasets used in Hadley's predictions had been lost, and could not be retrieved for verification.

Jones stepped down temporarily after the British government announced an ostensibly independent inquiry into the still-growing scandal, but that only fanned the flames, as skeptics pointed out ties between several panel members and the East Anglia center. In an interview two weeks ago, Jones also admitted that there has been no "statistically significant" global warming in the past 15 years.

The Met Office's desire for more robust and transparent data could also prove to be a blow for Rajendra Pachauri, head of the United Nations-backed International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose most recent report, published in 2007, has been exposed by skeptics as rife with scientific errors, larded with un-reviewed and non-scientific source materials, and other failings.

As details of the report's sloppiness emerged, the ranks of skeptics of the work have swelled to include larger numbers of the scientific community, including weather specialists who worked on the sprawling IPCC report. Calls for Pachauri's resignation have come from organizations as normally opposed as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the British chapter of Greenpeace. So far, he has refused to step down.

[Disoputlip]

You can easily argue that the changes are not man made.

But you cannot argue that the poles aren't melting. Nor can you argue that it isn't getting warmer. Glaciers on mountains are dissapearing like never before. Just look at them.

I think if the theory about sunspots had hit before the UN climate panel had posted their report, then the report could have been less political and more scientific.

I also hate the argument: 90% of scientists beleive. That is the worst argument that puts us back in the dark ages.

[Corth]

I've said before that I am an agnostic when it comes to this subject. Not qualified to make any sort of judgment. But it amazes me how many others who like myself know little or nothing about the underlying science yet are ready to form conclusions and argue for or against it. Often using that "90% of scientists" type of argument.

Dis - you point out that global warming is occurring whether man made or not. The thing is, that basic question of whether or not we cause it is the difference between allowing the status quo to continue, or changing the way we do things. If we change the way we do things, it will cost trillions of dollars and reduce the quality of our lives. If global warming is indeed man made, perhaps the trillions of dollars is justified. If not, then there isn't really much to talk about here.

[avak]

[Sarvis]

Are you kidding Avak? If the air is clean you can't make any money. If the air is polluted though, you get to sell inhalers, oxygen tanks, and all kinds of other things to counteract the pollutants in the air!

[Adriorn Darkcloak]

The "skeptic" on that cartoon believes the outcome to be a better world. The actual skeptics believe the outcome to be a negative one for all, with even more corporate control (Al Gore) over our lives. I think Corth sums up the skeptic or agnostic view pretty well in his previous post.

Conservationism vs. Environmentalism. One seeks to protect our environment, the latter to control it.

[avak]

So if an example of conservationism is a national forest, with prescribed land practices and usage...and an example of environmentalism is changing incandescents to compact fluorescents to save energy...then how does your assertion hold?

[Adriorn Darkcloak]

Changing light bulbs is an example of environmentalism? The light bulbs that, when broken, need me to open my windows for 15-30 minutes and do hazmat cleaning on the contaminated surface?

Likewise, I don't think I was given on option on changing or not. They're pretty much being fazed out. And yeah, declaring x land as a National Park is "forced" by the government as well in a way. How many different venues are trying to be forced by the environmental movement?

As a side note, which uses up more energy to make: an incandescent light bulb or a compact fluorescent light bulb? If it's about saving energy I think that should also be considered.

[kiryan]

I'm not arguing that climate change isn't happening. I may argue its not as extreme as the faulty IPCC report and Al Gore say.

I'm arguing that its no where close to certain that its man made. We've had ice ages, were those man made? Global climate change is about world government its about giving control to the UN so they can start dictating lifestyle changes that transfer wealth from rich nations to poor nations. Once you have the power to fine and inflict economic harm, you have the power to control.

Good cartoon, but then I guess that depends on what your definition of "better" is. Socialists will obviously think transfer of wealth results in a better world.

[teflor the ranger]

Our climate is constantly changing and the earth's physical history shows that. But it is the answers to the unanswered questions (link) that should guide our decisions and policy, not fear and ignorance. Fear and ignorance rarely result in a better world.

[kiryan]

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/ ... t-sources/

lay people with an interest in climate science (aka deniers) have visited "nearly every" weather station (thermometer whose data is a foundation of global climate change) is seriously influenced by external heat sources and ignore "rules" for their placement. For example: one is housed with a halogen light bulb, another is on top of a grave stone (which will soak up and radiate heat all night), another is on a tennis court and near a trash incinerator.

They claim that 90% of the weather stations have issues and they have photographic proof.

90% of the data will obviously need some "massaging" to have any meaning (let alone trustable).

[avak]

Did you read the whole article? It pretty much directly contradicts the 'conspiracy theory' model. There is a peer reviewed article about to be published in a well known journal where climate scientists actually...take the assertions seriously and investigate...

Two other things: One, the article also points on that this network of stations has been around for decades...has this organized effort to fool the world been that well choreographed? Two, if the stations are sited poorly, but there is no conspiratorial bent, wouldn't that result in simply bad data...some cold, some hot? The article states that the warming -trends- are incredibly well documented.

[kiryan]

I read the whole article. The first half is pro climate deniers, the second half is pro climate hoaxers.

What I pointed out was 90% of the sites are reportedly compromised / don't follow the supposed "rules". This is further evidence that global warming "science" is not able to be trusted because A) the data is wrong B) they can't follow their own rules.

To answer your second two points... I won't say that it has been orchestrated to be pro global warming since 1892. I don't see a conspiracy as much as I see a bunch of scientists persuaded by zealous extremist scientists and a mountain of potential research cash. Furthermore, I believe in global climate change (see Ice Age on wikipedia), I don't know that the current "warming" is as high and as prolonged and as "unprecedented" as stated. I also question whether its a natural cycle, or manmade and if it is held within a range by natural yet not understood processes. What they are engaged in is proof by empirical evidence which works well when you understand all the factors, but I could prove black people are dumber than white people with empirical evidence too... is that scientifically accurate?

Second, one of the leading scientists on the IPCC has stated that there is no warming trend for the last 15 or 25 years (I forget the exact numbers). Trend has a definition in statistical language, but I don't want to get too pedantic. They claim to substantiate the trend by inferring the cause of things like species migrations polar melting ect (local type events)... but in the same breath declare that the pervasive warmness of the dark ages (which was warmer than now) is unsubstantiated because they don't know what was happening in certain parts of the world (primarily south of the equator).

Additionally when these sites individually became compromised is a major question that has to be answered for each site before you could really make good use of the data. Heat wells caused by urbanization (concreted absorbs and stores heat) would definitely dramatically increase the readings vs 50 years ago when it was in a field. Some of this would happen quickly (like when it was moved next to a burn barrel) and some of it would happen slowly yet still overstate temperature by a couple of degrees. If 90% of the sites are compromised and they are on average 2 degrees warmer than they should be, you could dramatically overstate the "trend" if it exists (vs just a 50 year warming event). Maybe you can statistically analyze the increases away (which there is indication they already have), but I would be a lot more likely to trust your scientists if they hadn't been actively engaged in hiding data from scientists with opposing views.

The story they don't want to get out that I've always known is true is that scientists are actively manipulating the data. They are manipulating the research, the reports. Whether they are manipulating it honestly remains to be seen, but its certainly not "undeniably true".

[teflor the ranger]

Stupidity is a more powerful driving force than conspiracy.

The conspirators use the poor data collected by the stupid to hide their decline.