Here Kenneth, learn from the experts and don't forget to dump your source material!
Phil Jones steps down – pending independent review
3 uren 50 minuten geleden
From a University of East Anglia Press Release
CRU Update 1 December
Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit.
Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director’s role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support.”
Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton said: “I have accepted Professor Jones’s offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations.
“We will announce details of the Independent Review, including its terms of reference, timescale and the chair, within days. I am delighted that Professor Peter Liss, FRS, CBE, will become acting director.”
An AP story is here
h/t to Jeff Id of The Air Vent
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Climategate grows to include other research institutions
6 uren 14 minuten geleden
By Douglas J. Keenan in Pajamas Media
Phil Jones tried to hush my paper. SUNY Albany won’t discuss the investigation my paper initiated. And QUB ignored my three FOI requests for their data.
Some of the emails leaked in Climategate discuss my work. Following is a comment on that, and on something more important.
In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper [1] alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The emails show that Tom Wigley — one of the most oft-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate — thought my paper was valid [2]. They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to convince the journal editor not to publish my paper.
After my paper was published, the State University of New York — where the research discussed in my paper was conducted — carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed — contrary to the university’s policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report’s release.
But I was not allowed to see the report. Truly Kafkaesque.
The report apparently concluded that there was no fraud. The leaked files contain the defense used against my allegation, a defense obviously and strongly contradicted by the documentary record. It is no surprise then that the university still refuses to release the report. (More details on all of this — including source documents — are on my site [3].)
My paper demonstrates that by 2001, Jones knew there were severe problems with the urbanization research. Yet Jones continued to rely on that research in his work, including in his work for the latest report of the IPCC.
Misconduct at Queens University of Belfast
Read the complete story in Pajamas Media ====== For some background, see these two guest posts at WUWT:
Ring-a-Round 2: Queens University Belfast v Doug Keenan
Another UK climate data withholding scandal is emerging
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Climategate begs the question: “is peer review in need of change”?
7 uren 10 seconden geleden
The following is from the blog Master Resource. Run by Robert Bradley. There are many interesting and well written essays there, and WUWT readers might benefit from a visit. Be sure to support them by checking out their books and leaving comments. – Anthony
Climategate: Is Peer-Review in Need of Change?
by Chip Knappenberger
December 1, 2009
In science, as in most disciplines, the process is as important as the product. The recent email/data release (aka Climategate) has exposed the process of scientific peer-review as failing. If the process is failing, it is reasonable to wonder what this implies about the product.
Several scientists have come forward to express their view on what light Climategate has shed on these issues. Judith Curry has some insightful views here and here, along with associated comments and replies. Roger Pielke Jr. has an opinion, as no doubt do many others.
Certainly a perfect process does not guarantee perfect results, and a flawed process does not guarantee flawed results, but the chances of a good result are much greater with the former than the latter. That’s why the process was developed in the first place.
Briefly, the peer-review process is this; before results are published in the scientific literature and documented for posterity, they are reviewed by one or more scientists who have some working knowledge of the topic but who are not directly associated with the work under consideration. The reviewers are typically anonymous and basically read the paper to determine if it generally seems like a reasonable addition to the scientific knowledge base, and that the results seem reproducible given the described data and methodology.
Generally, reviewers do not “audit” the results—that is, spend a lot of effort untangling the details of the data and or methodologies to see if they are appropriate, or to try to reproduce the results for themselves. How much time and effort is put into a peer review varies greatly from case to case and reviewer to reviewer. On most occasions, the reviewers try to include constructive criticism that will help the authors improve their work—that is, the reviewers serve as another set of eyes and minds to look over and consider the research, eyes that are more removed from the research than the co-authors and can perhaps offer different insights and suggestions.
Science most often moves forwards in small increments (with a few notable exceptions) and the peer-review process is designed to keep it moving efficiently, with as little back-sliding or veering off course as possible.
It is not a perfect system, nor, do I think, was it ever intended to be.
The guys over at RealClimate like to call peer-review a “necessary but not sufficient condition.”
Certainly is it not sufficient. But increasingly, there are indications that its necessity is slipping—and the contents of the released Climategate emails are hastening that slide.
Personally, I am not applauding this decline. I think that the scientific literature (as populated through peer-review) provides an unparalleled documentation of the advance of science and that it should not be abandoned lightly. Thus, I am distressed by the general picture of a broken system that is portrayed in the Climategate emails.
Certainly there are improvements that could make the current peer-review system better, but many of these would be difficult to impose on a purely voluntary system.
Full audits of the research would make for better published results, but such a requirement is too burdensome on the reviewers, who generally are involved in their own research (among other activities) and would frown upon having to spend a lot of time to delve too deeply into the nitty-gritty details of someone else’s research topic.
An easier improvement to implement would be a double-blind review process in which both the reviewers and the authors were unknown to each other. A few journals incorporate this double-blind review process, but the large majority does not. I am not sure why not. Such a process would go at least part of the way to avoiding pre-existing biases against some authors by some reviewers.
Another way around this would be to have a fully open review process, in which the reviewers and author responses were freely available and open for all to see, and perhaps contribute. A few journals in fact have instituted this type of system, but not the majority.
Nature magazine a few years ago hosted a web debate on the state of scientific peer-review and possible ways of improving it. It is worth looking at to see the wide range of views and reviews assembled there.
As it now stands, a bias can exist in the current system. That it does exist is evident in the Climategate emails. By all appearances, it seems that some scientists are interested in keeping certain research (and particular researchers) out of the peer-review literature (and national and international assessments derived there from). While undoubtedly these scientists feel that they are acting in the best interest of science by trying to prevent too much backsliding and thereby keeping things moving forward efficiently, the way that they are apparently going about it is far from acceptable.
Instead of improving the process, it has nearly destroyed it.
If the practitioners of peer-review begin to act like members of an exclusive club controlling who and what gets published, the risk is run that the true course of science gets sidetracked. Even folks with the best intentions can be wrong. Having the process too tightly controlled can end up setting things back much further than a more loosely controlled process which is better at being self-correcting.
Certainly as a scientist, you want to see your particular branch of science move forward as quickly as possible, but pushing it forward, rather than letting it move on its own accord, can oftentimes prove embarrassing.
As it was meant to be, peer-review is a necessary, but not sufficient condition. As it has become, however, the necessity has been eroded. And blogs have arisen to fill this need.
In my opinion, blogs should serve as discussion places where ideas get worked out. The final results of which, should then be submitted to the peer-reviewed literature. To me, blogs are a 21st-century post-seminar beer outing, lunch discussion, or maybe even scientific conference. But they should not be an alternative to the scientific literature—a permanent documentation of the development of scientific ideas.
But, the rise of blogs as repositories of scientific knowledge will continue if the scientific literature becomes guarded and exclusive. I can only anticipate this as throwing the state of science and the quest for scientific understanding into disarray as we struggle to figure out how to incorporate blog content into the tested scientific knowledgebase. This seems a messy endeavor.
Instead, I think that the current peer-review system either needs to be re-established or redefined.
The single-blind review system seems to be an outdated one. With today’s technology, a totally open process seems preferable and superior—as long as it can be constrained within reason. At the very least, double-blind reviews should be the default. Maybe even some type of an audit system could be considered by some journals or some organizations.
Perhaps some good will yet come out of this whole Climategate mess—a fairer system for the consideration of scientific contribution, one that could less easily be manipulated by a small group of influential, but perhaps misguided, individuals.
We can only hope.
===
Please check out Master Resource
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Holy Hockey Sticks !
15 uren 8 minuten geleden
Last month I was surprised to find WUWT broke the 2 million hits barrier.
This month, it’s worse than we thought:
wordpress.com internal traffic counter for WUWT - click for larger image
Just another effect of Climategate.
In other news, some other websites didn’t appear to benefit from the Climategate “bump”.
From Alexa.com
As always, I say I could not have done this alone. My sincere thanks to the many contributors, and moderators Charles, DB, and Evan. Of course, let’s not forget all the readers and commenters. Truly a global village we have here.
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Playing hide and seek behind the trees
16 uren 15 minuten geleden
Still Hiding the Decline
by Steve McIntyre
Even in their Nov 24, 2009 statement, the University of East Anglia failed to come clean about the amount of decline that was hidden. The graphic in their statement continued to “hide the decline” in the Briffa reconstruction by deleting adverse results in the last part of the 20th century. This is what Gavin Schmidt characterizes as a “good thing to do”.
First here is the Nov 2009 diagram offered up by UEA:
Figure 1. Resized UEA version of Nov 2009, supposedly “showing the decline”. Original here ,
Here’s what UEA appears to have done in the above diagram.
While they’ve used the actual Briffa reconstruction after 1960 in making their smooth, even now, they deleted values after 1960 so that the full measure of the decline of the Briffa reconstruction is hidden. Deleted values are shown in magenta. Source code is below.
Figure 2. Emulation of UEA Nov 2009, using all the Briffa reconstruction.
R SOURCE CODE:
##COMPARE ARCHIVED BRIFFA VERSION TO CLIMATEGATE VERSION #1. LOAD BRIFFA (CLIMATEGATE VERSION) # archive is truncated in 1960: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/n_hem_temp/briffa2001jgr3.txt” loc=”http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=146&filename=939154709.txt” working=readLines(loc,n=1994-1401+104) working=working[105:length(working)] x=substr(working,1,14) writeLines(x,”temp.dat”) gate=read.table(“temp.dat”) gate=ts(gate[,2],start=gate[1,1]) #2. J98 has reference 1961-1990 #note that there is another version at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/jones1998/jonesdata.txt” loc=”ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/jones2001/jones2001_fig2.txt” test=read.table(loc,skip=17,header=TRUE,fill=TRUE,colClasses=”numeric”,nrow=1001) test[test== -9.999]=NA count= apply(!is.na(test),1,sum) test=ts(test,start=1000,end=2000) J2001=test[,"Jones"] #3. MBH : reference 1902-1980 url<-"ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/mann1999/recons/nhem-recon.dat" MBH99<-read.table(url) ;#this goes to 1980 MBH99<-ts(MBH99[,2],start=MBH99[1,1]) #4. CRU instrumental: 1961-1990 reference # use old version to 1997 in Briffa archive extended url<-"ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/n_hem_temp/briffa2001jgr3.txt" #readLines(url)[1:50] Briffa<-read.table(url,skip=24,fill=TRUE) Briffa[Briffa< -900]=NA dimnames(Briffa)[[2]]<-c("year","Jones98","MBH99","Briffa01","Briffa00","Overpeck97","Crowley00","CRU99") Briffa= ts(Briffa,start=1000) CRU=window(Briffa[,"CRU"],start=1850) tsp(CRU) # 1850 1999 #but starts 1871 and ends 1997 delta<-mean(CRU[(1902:1980)-1850])-mean(CRU[(1960:1990)-1850]); delta # -0.118922 #used to get MBH values with 1961-1990 reference: compare to 0.12 mentioned in Climategate letters #get updated version of CRU to update 1998 and 1999 values loc="http://hadobs.metoffice.com/crutem3/diagnostics/hemispheric/northern/annual" D=read.table(loc) #dim(D) #158 12 #start 1850 names(D)=c("year","anom","u_sample","l_sample","u_coverage","l_coverage","u_bias","l_bias","u_sample_cover","l_sample_cover", "u_total","l_total") cru=ts(D[,2],start=1850) tsp(cru) # 1850 2009 # update 1998-1999 values with 1998 values CRU[(1998:1999)-1849]= rep(cru[(1998)-1849],2) #Fig 2.21 Caption #The horizontal zero line denotes the 1961 to 1990 reference #period mean temperature. All series were smoothed with a 40-year Hamming-weights lowpass filter, with boundary constraints # imposed by padding the series with its mean values during the first and last 25 years. #this is a low-pass filter source("http://www.climateaudit.org/scripts/utilities.txt") #get filter.combine.pad function hamming.filter<-function(N) { i<-0:(N-1) w<-cos(2*pi*i/(N-1)) hamming.filter<-0.54 – 0.46 *w hamming.filter<-hamming.filter/sum(hamming.filter) hamming.filter } f=function(x) filter.combine.pad(x,a=hamming.filter(40),M=25)[,2] ## WMO Figure at CRU #http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate #WMO: uea.ac.uk!imageManager/1009061939.jpg #2009: uea.ac.uk!imageManager/4052145227.jpg X=ts.union(MBH=MBH99+delta,J2001,briffa=briffa[,"gate"],CRU=cru ) #collate Y=data.frame(X); year=c(time(X)) sapply(Y, function(x) range(year [!is.na(x)]) ) # MBH J2001 briffa CRU # [1,] 1000 1000 1402 1850 # [2,] 1980 1991 1994 2009 smoothb= ts(apply(Y,2,f),start=1000) xlim0=c(1000,2000) #xlim0=c(1900,2000) ylim0=c(-.6,.35) par(mar=c(2.5,4,2,1)) col.ipcc=c("blue","red","green4","black") par(bg="beige") plot( c(time(smoothb)),smoothb[,1],col=col.ipcc,lwd=2,bg="beige",xlim=xlim0,xaxs="i",ylim=ylim0,yaxs="i",type="n",axes=FALSE,xlab="",ylab="deg C (1961-1990)") usr 1960 points( c(time(smoothb))[temp],smoothb[temp,"briffa"],pch=19,cex=.7,col=”magenta”) Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
A first? Climategate enabled political shift in Australia – warmist replaced with sceptic
16 uren 35 minuten geleden
The Liberal Party in Australia’s parliament has a new leader.
Herald Sun Blogger and Columnist, Andrew bolt writes to me in an email:
Anthony,
This may be a first: a major political party has dumped a global warming believer as leader and replaced him with sceptic who last month called AGW “crap”. Tony Abbott has tempered his public pronouncements since, but has today become the new Liberal leader, toppling warmist Malcolm Turnbull, specifically because he was the only one of the three contenders today to promise to delay the Government’s emissions trading scheme.
Bolt adds some background:
Following up with excerpts from new Liberal leader Tony Abbott’s memoir Battlelines, released in July.
On page 171 he quotes, with approval, Bjorn Lomborg:
“Natural science has undeniably shown us that global warming is man-made and real. But just as undeniable is the economic science, which makes it clear that a narrow focus on reducing carbon emissions could leave future generations lumbered with major costs, without major cuts in temperatures.”
Abbott then adds:
“Without binding universal arrangements, any effort by Australia (on emissions trading) could turn out to be a futile gesture, damaging local industry but making no appreciable dent in global emissions…. Another big problem with any Australian emissions reduction scheme is that it would not make a material difference to atmospheric carbon concentrations unless the big international polluters had similar schemes. Australia accounts for about 1 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. At recent rates of growth, China’s increase in emissions in about a year could match Australia’s entire carbon dioxide output. Without binding universal arrangements, any effort by Australia could turn out to be a futile gesture, damaging local industry but making no appreciable dent in global emissions.”
He also questions what climate alarmists truly want:
“It’s hard to take climate alarmists all that seriously, though, when they’re as ferociously against the one proven technology that could reduce electricity emissions to zero, nuclear power, as they are in favour of urgent reduction in emissions. For many, reducing emissions is a means to achieving a political objective they could not otherwise gain.”
======
Lest you think that Climategate had nothing to do with this political shift, please read what Bolt had to say about its impact in my previous post:
The Australian ETS vote: a political litmus test for cap and trade
Several MPs have indeed mentioned the emails in their party room speeches, and your correspondents miss the way MPs actually pick up things.
Andrew Bolt has one of the most read blogs and columns in Australia and is helping to educate both people and politicians alike on the true costs of climatic induced cap and trade, please visit his blog to show some support. – Anthony
blogs.news.com.au
Following up with excerpts from new Liberal leader Tony Abbott’s memoir Battlelines, released in July. On page 171 he quotes, with approval, Bjorn Lomborg:“Natural science has undeniably shown us that global warming is man-made and real. But just as undeniable is the economic science, which makes it clear that a narrow focus on reducing carbon emissions could leave future generations lumbered with major costs, without major cuts in temperatures.”Abbott then adds:
“Without binding universal arrangements, any effort by Australia (on emissions trading) could turn out to be a futile gesture, damaging local industry but making no appreciable dent in global emissions.… Another big problem with any Australian emissions reduction scheme is that it would not make a material difference to atmospheric carbon concentrations unless the big international polluters had similar schemes. Australia accounts for about 1 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. At recent rates of growth, China’s increase in emissions in about a year could match Australia’s entire carbon dioxide output. Without binding universal arrangements, any effort by Australia could turn out to be a futile gesture, damaging local industry but making no appreciable dent in global emissions.”
He also questions what climate alarmists truly want:
“It’s hard to take climate alarmists all that seriously, though, when they’re as ferociously against the one proven technology that could reduce electricity emissions to zero, nuclear power, as they are in favour of urgent reduction in emissions. For many, reducing emissions is a means to achieving a political objective they could not otherwise gain.”
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
China, India, Brazil, South Africa plan joint walkout if pressured at Copenhagen
16 uren 58 minuten geleden
From the Times of India – a “put up or shut up” moment – “we’ll go along if you pay us”.
Excerpts below:
BEIJING: In an unprecedented move, India on Saturday joined China and two other developing countries to prepare for a major offensive on rich nations at the Copenhagen conference on climate change next month.
The four countries, which include Brazil and South Africa, agreed to a strategy that involves jointly walking out of the conference if the developed nations try to force their own terms on the developing world, Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister for environment and forests (independent charge), said.
“We will not exit in isolation. We will co-ordinate our exit if any of our non-negotiable terms is violated. Our entry and exit will be collective,” Ramesh told reporters in Beijing.
The move comes after reports suggested that rich nations led by Denmark are trying to set the agenda of the conference by presenting a draft containing a set of specific proposals.
…
The four nations issued a joint press release, which made it clear the developed nations should be ready to contribute funds and share green technology if they expected the developing and poor nations to take major actions on environmental protection.
…
The developing nations will also not accept any pressure from developed countries to establish legally binding emission targets at Copenhagen. Developing countries want to be allowed to reduce emissions voluntarily and take what they consider to be “nationally appropriate actions” he said.
Ramesh said India will under no circumstances accept the concept of a peaking year under which each country will have to indicate on what date they will reach the highest level of pollution before beginning to come down.
India will also not accept any unsupported mitigation actions without any effort by developed countries to provide funds and technology support to improve environment in developing nations.
Read the complete article at the Times of India
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
The Climate Science Isn’t Settled
1. December 2009 - 4:17
Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted.
A commentary by Richard S. Lindzen in the WSJ
Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally—such as for the last dozen years or so—it does little that can be discerned.
Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.
The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.
The defining characteristic of a greenhouse gas is that it is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun but can absorb portions of thermal radiation. In general, the earth balances the incoming solar radiation by emitting thermal radiation, and the presence of greenhouse substances inhibits cooling by thermal radiation and leads to some warming.
That said, the main greenhouse substances in the earth’s atmosphere are water vapor and high clouds. Let’s refer to these as major greenhouse substances to distinguish them from the anthropogenic minor substances. Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called “climate forcing.”
The full article may be found here.
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Climategate turbulence
1. December 2009 - 2:45
Russ Steele writes: President Obama will soon be on his his way to Copenhagen and his Bagdad Bob moment in Air Force One. Climategate is sure to create some turbulence.
From The Chilling Effect
Got any political cartoons on Climategate? Post links to them below.
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Pielke Senior: Revkin perpetuates a myth about the surface temperature record
1. December 2009 - 1:29
A Myth About The Surface Temperature Record Analyses Perpetuated On Dot Earth By Andy Revkin
By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
On the weblog Dot Earth today, there is text from Michael Schlesinger, a climatologist at the University of Illinois, that presents analyses of long term surface temperature trends from NASA, NCDC and Japan as if these are from independent sets of data from the analysis of CRU. Andy Revkin is perpetuating this myth in this write-up by not presenting the real fact that these analyses draw from the same original raw data. While they may use only a subset of this raw data, the overlap has been estimated as about 90-95%.
The unresolved problems with this surface data (which, of course, applies to all four locations) is reported in the peer reviewed paper
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.
I discuss this issue in my recent post
Further Comment On The Surface Temperature Data Used In The CRU, GISS And NCDC Analyses
where I document that even the CCSP 1.1. report acknowledged this lack of independence.
Andy Revkin’s post on the surface temperature record data sets is not journalistically accurate.
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
What Do We Really Know About Climate Change?
30. November 2009 - 21:05
A Guest Post by Basil Copeland
Like many of Anthony’s readers here on WUWT, I’ve been riveted by all the revelations and ongoing discussion and analysis of the CRUtape Letters™ (with appropriate props to WUWT’s “ctm”). It might be hard to imagine that anyone could add to what has already been said, but I am going to try. It might also come as a surprise, to those who reckon me for a skeptic, that I do not think that anything was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data set maintained by CRU was irreparably damaged by these revelations. We’ve known all along that the data may be biased by poor siting issues, handling of station dropout, or inadequate treatment of UHI effects. But nothing was revealed that suggests that the global temperature data sets are completely bogus, or unreliable.
I will return to the figure at the top of this post below, but I want to introduce another figure to illustrate the previous assertion:
This figure plots smoothed seasonal differences (year to year differences in monthly anomalies) for the four major global temperature data sets: HadCRUT, GISS, UAH and RSS. With the exception of the starting months of the satellite era (UAH and RSS), and to a lesser degree the starting months of GISS, there is remarkable agreement between the four data sets – where they overlap – especially with respect to the cyclical pattern of natural climate variation. This coherence gives me confidence that while there may be problems with the land-sea data sets, they accurately reflect the general course of natural climate variation over the period for which we have instrumental data. While we need to continue to insist upon open access to the data and methods used to chronicle global and regional climate variation, and refine the process to remove the biases which may be present from trying to make the data fit the narrative of CO2 induced global warming, it would be wrong to conclude that the “CRUtape Letters” prove that global warming does not exist. That has never really been the issue. The issue has been the extent of warming (have the data been distorted in a way that would overstate the degree of warming?), the extent to which it is the result of natural climate variation (as opposed to human influences), and the extent to which it owes to human influences other than the burning of fossil fuels (such as land use/land cover changes, urban heat islands, etc.). And flowing from this, the issue has been whether we really know enough to justify the kind of massive government programs said to be necessary to forestall climate catastrophe.
Figure 2 plots the composite smooth against the backdrop of the monthly seasonal differences of the four global temperature data sets:
Many readers may recognize the familiar episodes of warming and cooling associated with ENSO and volcanic activity in the preceding figure. With a little more smoothing, we get a pattern like that depicted in Figure 3, which other readers may notice looks a lot like the cycles that Anthony and I have attributed to lunar and solar influences (they are the same):
In either case, the thing to note is that over time climate goes through repetitive episodes of warming and cooling. You have to look closely on Figures 2 and 3 – it is much clearer in Figure 1 – but episodes of warming exist when the smooth is above zero, and cooling episodes exist when the smooth is below zero. Remember, by design, the smooth is not a plot of the temperature itself, but of the trend in the temperature, i.e. the year to year change in monthly temperatures. The intent is to demonstrate and delineate the range of natural climate variation in global temperatures. It shows, in effect, the trend in the trend – up and down over time, with natural regularity, while perhaps also trending generally upward over time.
Which brings us to Figure 1. Here we are focusing in on the last 30 years, and a forecast to 2050 derived by a simple linear regression through the (composite) smooth of Figure 3. (Standard errors have been adjusted for serial correlation.) There has been an upward trend in the global temperature trend, and when this is projected out to 2050, the average is 0.114°C per decade ± 0.440°C per decade. Yes, you read that right: ± 0.440°C per decade. Broad enough to include both the worst imaginations of the IPCC and the CRU crowd, as well as negative growth rates, i.e. global cooling. Because if the truth be told, natural climate variation is so – well, variable – that no one can say with any kind of certainty what the future holds with respect to climate change. Be skeptical of any statistical claims to the contrary.
I think we can say, however, with reasonable certainty, that earth’s climate will remain variable, and that this will frustrate the effort to blame climate change on CO2 induced AGW. Noted on the image at the top of this post is a quote from Kevin Trenberth from the CRUtape Letters™: “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warmth at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.” Trenberth betrays a subtle bias here – he cannot acknowledge the recent period of global cooling. It is, rather, “a lack of warmth.” But he is right that it is a “travesty” that we cannot fully account for the ebb and flow of earth’s energy balance, and ultimately, climate change. I think Trenberth just sees it as a lack of monitoring methods or devices. But I think there still remains a considerable lack of knowledge, or understanding, about the mechanics of natural climate variation. If you look carefully at Figure 1, you will notice that there seem to be upper and lower limits to the range of natural climate variability. On the scale depicted in Figure 1 (the scale is different with other degrees of smoothing), when warming reaches a limit of approximately 0.08-0.10°C per year, the warming slows down, and eventually a period of cooling takes place, always with the space of just a few years. Homeostasis, anyone? While phenomenon like ENSO are the effect of this regularity in natural climate variation, they are not the cause of it.
In my opinion, what is the real travesty of the global warming ideology is the hijacking of climate science in the service of a research agenda that has prevented science from investigating the full range of natural climate variation, because that would be an inconvenient truth. We see this, quite clearly, in the CRUtape Letters™ where the Medieval Warm Period is just “putative,” and a rather inconvenient truth that needs to be suppressed. Or the “1940’s blip” that implies that global temperatures increased just as rapidly in the early part of the 20th Century, as they did at the end of the 20th Century, an inconvenient truth at odds with the narrative preferred by the IPCC.
It is a truism that “climate varies on all time scales.” With respect to the variability demonstrated here, I’m convinced that someday it will be acknowledged that variability on this scale is dominated by lunar and solar influences. On longer scales, such as the ebb and flow from the Medieval Warm Period, through the Little Ice Age, and now into the “Modern Warm Period,” I do not think climate science yet has any real understanding of the underlying causes of such climate change. If we are, as seems possible, on the verge of a Dalton or Maunder type minimum in solar activity, we may eventually have an answer to whether solar activity can account for centennial scale changes in earth’s climate. And I do think it is reasonable to conclude, at the margin, that human activity has had some influence. It is hard to imagine population growing from one to six billion over the past one and a half centuries without some effect. Most likely, the effect is on local and regional scales, but this might add up to a discernible impact on global temperature. But until all of the forces that determine the full range of natural climate variability are understood better than they are now, there is no scientific justification for the massive overhaul of economic and government structures being promoted under the guise of climate change, or global warming.
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Shocker – CRU’s Jones: GISS is inferior
30. November 2009 - 7:58
I was working on another project related to the CRU emails and came across this email from Dr.Phil Jones. I was stunned, not only because he was dissing another dataset, but mostly because that dissing hit many of the points about problems with the NASA GISS products we’ve covered here on WUWT and at Climate Audit.
Here’s the email with my highlights added. Email addresses have been partially redacted.
click for larger image
The original email can be seen at this link:
eastangliaemails.com
Here’s the thing, we’ve seen the problems with CRU’s temperature series in the code already. If Dr. Jones is aware of those problems, and he thinks GISS is inferior, well then, wow, just how bad is GISS?
I thought this statement was quite telling:
Their non-use of a base period (GISS using something very odd and NCDC first differences) means they can use
very short series that we can’t (as they don’t have base periods) but with short series it is impossible to assess for homogeneity.
One thing about GISS that has bothered a lot of people – the base period they use for calculating temperature anomaly is for 1951-1980. See it listed here on the GISTEMP page. No other data sets use that period. Critics (including myself) have said that by using that period, it makes this graph’s trend look steeper than it would if the current 30 year period was used.
click for larger image
In the past couple of years we’ve seen two significant errors with NASA GISS that had to be corrected after they were discovered through the work done here at at WUWT and Climate audit. Public errors have not been found in CRU products during that time, because the data an code have been withheld.
To the credit of NASA GISS, they have been more transparent than CRU on data, stations used, and code.
Here are some of the relevant posts on WUWT where we address issues found with the NASA GISS temperature products:
How bad is the global temperature data?
And now, the most influential station in the GISS record is …
GISS for June – way out there
NASA GISS: adjustments galore, rewriting U.S. climate history
Absence makes the chart grow fonder
A comphrehensive comparison of GISS and UAH global Temperature data
Getting crabby – another missing NASA GISS station found, thanks to a TV show
More on NOAA’s FUBAR Honolulu “record highs” ASOS debacle, PLUS finding a long lost GISS station
Revisiting Detroit Lakes
Weather Station Data: raw or adjusted?
GISS Divergence with satellite temperatures since the start of 2003
Divergence Between GISS and UAH since 1980
GISS’s Gavin Schmidt credits WUWT community with spotting the error
GISS, NOAA, GHCN and the odd Russian temperature anomaly – “It’s all pipes!”
Corrected NASA GISTEMP data has been posted
Adjusting Pristine Data
A new view on GISS data, per Lucia
The Accidental Tourist (aka The GISS World Tour)
Rewriting History, Time and Time Again
Why Does NASA GISS Oppose Satellites?
Cedarville Sausage
How not to measure temperature, part 52: Another UFA sighted in Arizona
How not to measure temperature, part 51.
NASA’s Hansen Frees the Code !
Does Hansen’s Error “Matter”? – guest post by Steve McIntyre
1998 no longer the hottest year on record in USA
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Quote of the week #25 – Krugman’s LOL on skeptics
29. November 2009 - 22:39
I don’ t know what sort of world NYT reporters live in, but I am now convinced that some like Paul Krugman have no clue about the real world people live in elsewhere.
‘This Week” with George Stephanopoulos debates ClimateGate – more here
Noel Sheppard over at Newsbusters provides some video and transcript of a debate between Paul Krugman of the NYT and Washington Post columnist George Will.
KRUGMAN: There is tremendously more money in being a skeptic than there is in being a supporter. ... They get almost equal time in the media.
When I read what Paul Krugman said, I laughed out loud. He’s truly clueless.
Here’s the context:
WILL: Speaking of the marketplace, the biggest industry in the world right now may be fighting climate change. There are billions, trillions of dollars on the table, and when you say, well, they are academics and they are scientists and they talk in funny ways — academics are human beings, and the enormous incentive to get on the bandwagon on global warming, the financial incentive, the market driving this, is huge.
KRUGMAN: There is tremendously more money in being a skeptic than there is in being a supporter.
WILL: Hardly.
KRUGMAN: It’s so much easier, come on. You got the energy industry’s behind it. There are 20 times as many believers as there are skeptics in the scientific community. They get almost equal time in the media.
(CROSSTALK)
WILL: Is there a larger venture capital firm in this country than the Energy Department of this government, which right now is sending out billions and billions of dollars in speculation on green energy?
Noel Sheppard writes:
Skeptics get almost equal time in the media? Yeah, that’s why this appears to be the first time ABC addressed this ClimateGate issue.
As for there being more money in being a skeptic than there is in supporting this myth, the facts say otherwise.
The Science and Public Policy Institute issued a report on the money involved in funding the global warming debate in August concluding, “Over the last two decades, US taxpayers have subsidized the American climate change industry to the tune of $79 billion.”
By contrast, the same study found that the media bogeyman “Exxon Mobil gave a mere $23 million, spread over ten years, to climate sceptics.”
See the video and transcript at Newsbusters
UPDATE: Professor Don Easterbrook left this comment on the ABC news site:
I’ve spent 4 decades studying global climate change and as a scientist I am appalled at Krugman’s cavalier shrugging off the Hadley email scandal as ‘just the way scientists talk among themselves.’ That’s like saying it’s alright for politicians to be corrupt because that’s the way they are. Legitimate scientists do not doctor data, delete data they don’t like, hide data they don’t want seen, hijack the peer review process, personally attack other scientists whose views differ from theirs, send fraudulent data to the IPCC that is used to perpetuate the greatest hoax in the history science, provide false data to further legislation on climate change that will result in huge profits for corrupt lobbyists and politicians, and tell outright lies about scientific data.
Posted by: Don Easterbrook | Nov 29, 2009 1:57:05 PM
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
The Medieval Warm Period – a global phenomenon, unprecedented warming, or unprecedented data manipulation?
29. November 2009 - 21:53
Guest post from Von Rudolf Kipp
Originally in German here, with some portions translated to English using the Google translator below.
[update--translation provided by poster EWCZ ~ ctm]
Google translator is largely imperfect, but to read the Google translation in English go here.
If anyone wishes to do a personal translation for the entire article, please leave a note in comments and I will replace it. Of great interest is the global graphic below, which shows that the MWP is a worldwide event, not just limited to portions of the Northern Hemisphere.
“ “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984
We live in an age of superlatives. When you turn on the TV nowadays, you get offered the choice of best films, the greatest hits or the dumbest opening lines of all time. And even with a detergent it is long ago not sufficient when it washes whiter than white. Again, the constant sale appeal to the consumer can be maintained only if the product is billed as “The best thing ever.”
Naturally, also the reporting on climate change must follow this trend. Therefore the upcoming conference in Copenhagen is optionally about the salvation of mankind, of whole ecosystems, or for those who like it even more bombastic, the salvation of the planet. To achieve this, we continue to learn, enormous changes in our economic and financial system are needed. Production companies and countries should put on bureaucratic manacles to control their CO2 emissions. Best with the help of worldwide dedicated government-like organizations.
What is the purpose of all this? You suspect or know it already. We are experiencing a warming, which has not existed in the history of mankind, or even in the history of the earth. And as a result we will experience the greatest disasters of all time. Honestly!
Click for an interactive graphic that will expand each graph on mouseover
Medieval Warm Period thesis contradicts the unprecedented warming
However, one must mention that, already the first half of the statement, that about the unprecedented warming, elicits significant question marks in many climate scientists and even at many historians. Wasn’t there something like the medieval warm period? And in the opinion of many scientists, wasn’t it warmer during this period than today?
The idea of a medieval warm period was formulated for the first time in 1965 by the English climatologist Hubert H. Lamb [1]. Lamb, who founded the UK Climate Research Unit (CRU) in 1971, saw the peak of the warming period from 1000 to 1300, i.e. in the High Middle Ages. He estimated that temperatures then were 1-2 ° C above the normal period of 1931-1960. In the high North, it was even up to 4 degrees warmer. The regular voyages of the Vikings between Iceland and Greenland were rarely hindered by ice, and many burial places of the Vikings in Greenland still lie in the permafrost.
Glaciers were smaller than today
Also the global retreat of glaciers that occurred in the period between about 900 to 1300 [2] speaks for the existence of the Medieval Warm Period. An interesting detail is that many glaciers pulling back since 1850 reveal plant remnants from the Middle Ages, which is a clear proof that the extent of the glaciers at that time was lower than today [3].
Furthermore, historical traditions show evidence of unusual warmth at this time. Years around 1180 brought the warmest winter decade ever known. In January 1186/87, the trees were in bloom near Strasbourg. And even earlier you come across a longer heat phase, roughly between 1021 and 1040. The summer of 1130 was so dry that you could wade through the river Rhine. In 1135, the Danube flow was so low that people could cross it on foot. This fact has been exploited to create foundation stones for the bridge in Regensburg this year [4].
Clear evidence of the warm phase of the Middle Ages can also be found in the limits of crop cultivation. The treeline in the Alps climbed to 2000 meters, higher than current levels are [5]. Winery was possible in Germany at the Rhine and Mosel up to 200 meters above the present limits, in Pomerania, East Prussia, England and southern Scotland, and in southern Norway, therefore, much farther north than is the case today [6]. On the basis of pollen record there is evidence that during the Middle Ages, right up to Trondheim in Norway, wheat was grown and until nearly the 70th parallel/latitude barley was cultivated[4]. In many parts of the UK arable land reached heights that were never reached again later.
Also in Asia historical sources report that the margin of cultivation of citrus fruits was never as far north as in the 13th century. Accordingly, it must have been warmer at the time about 1 ° C than today [7].
Archeology and history confirm interglacial
Insects can also be used as historical markers for climate. The cold sensitive beetle Heterogaster urticae was detected during the Roman Optimum and during the Norman High Middle Age in York. Despite the warming of the 20th century, this beetle is found today only in sunny locations in the south of England [8].
During the medieval climate optimum, the population of Europe reached hitherto unknown highs. Many cities were founded at this very time with high-altitude valleys, high pastures and cultivated areas, which were at the beginning of the Little Ice Age again largely abandoned [9].
The Middle Ages was the era of high culture of the Vikings. In this period their expansion occurred into present-day Russia and the settlement of Iceland, Greenland and parts of Canada and Newfoundland. In Greenland even cereals were grown about this time.. With the end of the Medieval Warm Period the heyday of the Vikings ended. The settlements in Greenland had to be abandoned as well as in the home country of Norway, during this time, many northern communities located at higher altitudes [10]. The history of the Vikings also corresponds very well to the temperature reconstructions from Greenland, which were carried out using ice cores. According to the reconstructions, Greenland was at the time of the Vikings at least one degree warmer than in the modern warming period [11].
Climate scientists want to eliminate contradictions
Until about the mid-90s of last century the Medieval Warm Period was for climate researchers an undisputed fact. Therefore in the first progress report of the IPCC from 1990 on page 202, there was the graphics 7c [12], in which the Medieval Warm Period was portrayed as clearly warmer than the present. However, the existence of this warm period became quickly a thorn in the side for the scientists responsible. When in 12th century without human influence the climate has been even warmer than at the height of industrialization, why should the current warming have non-natural causes?
Thus, the Medieval Warm Period was soon declared an odious affair. Meanwhile, an e-mail is legendary, which was sent to a U.S. climate researcher David Deming [13] in 1995. This scientist published an article in the prestigious journal Science in which he had presented research on climate change in North America based on cores [14].
With this publication, he was immediately known among climate researchers, and some of them obviously thought that he was toeing their line [13, 15]:
“With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I would be one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them dropped his guard. An important person working in the field of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email with the words: ‘We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period’. “
Meanwhile, the climate machinery for the eradication of the Medieval Warm Period has already started. In 1995, the English climatologist Keith Briffa published in the journal Nature a study with sensational results. According to his studies of tree rings in the Siberian Polar-Ural, there had never been a Medieval Warm Period and the 20th century, suddenly appeared as the warmest of the last 1000 years [16]. The real breakthrough was the thesis of 20th Century experience as the warmest of the millennium, but not until three years later, and that with the release of Michael Mann’s infamous Hockeystick [17, 18].
Warm period is extinguished
In this diagram that became the icon of human-induced global warming in the 3rd IPCC Assessment Report, the Medieval Warm Period has now been completely eradicated. However, this curve was quickly under attack, mainly because the Canadian mathematician Steven McIntyre had serious doubts about the correctness of the representation and those pursued with the meticulousness of an auditor [19]. McIntyre showed not only that Mann had used an algorithm that resulted in 90 percent of the cases to a hockey stick, but found also serious errors in the selection of the data and the location of places, as well as the use of incorrect data [20].
Of course, the Mann’s gang could not let these allegations unanswered. In response, Realclimate.com was founded, a name intended to suggest the truth, but somehow reminiscent of the Real Ghostbusters, a poorly made copy of the genuine, which in contrast to the original only pretends to be the right thing. This webpage was henceforth used for accusations and slanders against the non-”believers” [21]. It took also increasingly care not to call McIntyre, in the meantime identified as the main enemy, by his name.
Following the publication of Michel Mann’s hockey stick and the criticism, whole series of further studies was published to demonstrate that the results of Mann’s actually represented the real temperatures over the last 1000 years. The highpoint of the debate was the forced disclosure of the raw data from tree ring studies long held under lock and key, which served as one of the principal witnesses for the correctness of the thesis of the unusually warm 20th century. It turned out that clearly the data were selected intently to get the desired result [22].
Conflicting data
Regardless of the debate over the proper or improper use of proxy data like tree rings to determine the temperature history, mainstream climate researchers, however, are still struggling with a whole series of problems. What was with all the archaeological data, the records of weather events in church records and historical facts, which clearly documented that in the Middle Ages, there was an unusually warm period? Quite simply, the attempts to refute these arguments were made based on claims that all these phenomena indeed existed, but only as geographically limited events [23]. If the Middle Ages was warmer somewhere than today, then maybe it was only in England, the Alps, Greenland or North America. Globally, however, as shown in the many hockey stick charts, it has been colder than at the end of the 20th century.
If one, however, provides an overview of the literature on the subject of Medieval Warm Period, which has been published in recent years, there will be a completely different picture. There are now quite a number of studies from around the world, showing all one thing. And indeed, that the High Middle Ages were warmer than today. An excellent overview can be found on the website CO2 Science, which has set up a whole section for studies of this kind [24]. There are now 765 different scientists from 453 research institutes listed that have worked on the medieval warm period. A small portion of these studies is shown in the figure below [Click 25] (by the graph, you get a larger image where you can select individual work).
This survey shows one thing quite clearly. At the time of the Middle Ages, that is, from 1000 to 1300 it was almost everywhere in the world warmer than today. There have been periods of warming, that exceeded 0.6 degree Celsius rise in temperature in the 20th century and totally without the man-made increased emissions of the supposed “climate killer” of CO2. The statements, that there has not been any Medieval Warm Period, or it was merely a localized phenomenon, can safely be regarded as untenable.
It is therefore not surprising that there are influences on the climate, which can by far exceed the CO2 as a driver of climate variability. This hypothesis is massively supported by the observations made during the last 10 years. Finally, we have been experiencing no increase since 2002, the temperatures have dropped slightly [26]. And that even though the emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels in exactly the same period increased to previously unmatched dimensions.
Google translation in English of the full article is here.
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Climategate page added – your help needed
29. November 2009 - 20:36
Given the volume of posts here on the issue and elsewhere, I’ve decided to start a repository for reference purposes.
I’ve added a “Climategate” page on WUWT and put all relevant WUWT posts in it. But I need help in adding more. Here are the details:
1.We need additional outside links. You can add these in comments to the Climategate page which is here: wattsupwiththat.com You can also see it on the menu bar below the masthead.
2.I need a librarian volunteer to help with populating this page. My workload and that of the moderators is getting excessive. I can’t get regular work done as it is. The requirements for anyone who wishes to volunteer are full disclosure to me of who you are, along with email exchanges and a telephone interview. I don’t take the task of giving edit access to WUWT lightly. Its all work and no pay, but it has its rewards.
3.I think we need a climategate logo – submissions welcome in comments, just post it up on tinypic or flickr or some web image sharing service and put the URL in comemnts. Please stay away from anything derogatory. Here’s your chance to make an interesting artful contribution.
Thank you for your consideration.
Anthony
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
UK Prove It! poll – still taking votes
29. November 2009 - 19:38
From WUWT Tips and Notes comments by Robert E. Phelan:
Ric Werme has been tracking the Science Museum “Prove It!” poll since October 29th here:
wermenh.com
Starting November 2 the “count-me-in” votes have substantially outnumbered the “count-me-out” votes, although the outs have remained ahead in the over-all tally. Since November 24th the daily count has begun to favor the “outs” again. It looks like Climategate is starting to have an effect.
For those who may not yet know the story behind the poll and the ups and downs, WUWT has a nice thread here:
wattsupwiththat.com
The poll can be found here:
sciencemuseum.org.uk
If anyone has not yet voted in that poll, this would be a good time to send a message. Do not be intimidated by the “we will forward your comment to the government” message. It appears for both the “in” and “out” voters; it may have been intended to be intimidating, but now is the time for everyine to send a message: “We will NOT be intimidated!”
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Hansen: “The fraudulence of the Copenhagen approach” – “must be exposed.”
29. November 2009 - 19:31
There’s an essay by Dr. James Hansen in the Guardian, the header of which is shown below. Next time people accuse of “big oil” connections for skeptics, point out that the most pro-agw newspaper on the planet is pushing Shell Oil ads.
That distraction aside, Dr. Hansen has some stunning things to say, excerpts below.
“The fraudulence of the Copenhagen approach – “goals” for emission reductions, “offsets” that render ironclad goals almost meaningless, the ineffectual “cap-and-trade” mechanism – must be exposed. We must rebel against such politics as usual.”
…
“Governments are stating emission goals that they know are lies – or, if we want to be generous, they do not understand the geophysics and are kidding themselves.”
…
Cap and trade with offsets, in contrast, is astoundingly ineffective. Global emissions rose rapidly in response to Kyoto, as expected, because fossil fuels remained the cheapest energy.
It is clear that Hansen doesn’t agree with the current direction. The plan that he outlines, while radical, certainly seems less damaging than “cap and trade”, which is primed for abuse and corruption of the system.
Read the complete article here at the Guardian
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
When Results Go Bad …
29. November 2009 - 15:30
Guest post by Willis Eschenbach
One of the claims in this hacked CRU email saga goes something like “Well, the scientists acted like jerks, but that doesn’t affect the results, it’s still warming.”
I got intrigued by one of the hacked CRU emails, from the Phil Jones and Kevin Trenberth to Professor Wibjorn Karlen. In it, Professor Karlen asked some very pointed questions about the CRU and IPCC results. He got incomplete, incorrect and very misleading answers. Here’s the story, complete with pictures. I have labeled the text to make it clear who is speaking, including my comments.
From Jones and Trenberth to Wibjorn Karlen, 17 Sep 2008 (email # 1221683947).
Hi Wibjorn
It appears that your concern is mainly with the surface temperature record, and my co lead author in IPCC, Phil Jones, is best able to address those questions. However the IPCC only uses published data plus their extensions and in our Chapter the sources of the data are well documented, along with their characteristics. I offer a few more comments below (my comments are limited as I am on vacation and away from my office).
[Karlen to Trenberth]Uppsala 17 September 2008,
Dear Kevin,
In short, the problem is that I cannot find data supporting the temperature curves in IPCC and also published in e.g. Forster, P. et al. 2007: Assessing uncertainty in climate simulation. Nature 4: 63-64.
[My comments] Here is the figure from Nature, Assessing uncertainty in climate simulations, Piers Forster et al., Nature Reports Climate Change , 63 (2007) doi:10.1038/climate.2007.46a
Original Caption: Figure 1: Comparison of observed continental- and global-scale changes in surface temperature with results simulated by climate models using natural and anthropogenic forcings. Decadal averages of observations are shown for the period 1906 to 2005 (black line) plotted against the centre of the decade and relative to the corresponding average for 1901–1950. Lines are dashed where spatial coverage is less than 50%. Blue shaded bands show the 5–95% range for 19 simulations from five climate models using only the natural forcings due to solar activity and volcanoes. Red shaded bands show the 5–95% range for 58 simulations from 14 climate models using both natural and anthropogenic forcings. SOURCE: nature.com
Here is the IPCC figure he is referring to, Fig. 9.12, once again with the black lines showing the instrumentally measured temperatures:
Original Caption: Figure 9.12. Comparison of multi-model data set 20C3M model simulations containing all forcings (red shaded regions) and containing natural forcings only (blue shaded regions) with observed decadal mean temperature changes (°C) from 1906 to 2005 from the Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit gridded surface temperature data set (HadCRUT3; Brohan et al., 2006). The panel labelled GLO shows comparison for global mean; LAN, global land; and OCE, global ocean data. Remaining panels display results for 22 sub-continental scale regions (see the Supplementary Material, Appendix 9.C for a description of the regions).…
Note that around the globe, temperatures are shown as rising from 1900 to about 1930, falling or staying level until the mid ’70s, and then rising sharply after that.
So these are the curves that Professor Karlen is attempting to reconstruct. Note that the IPCC chapter identifies these as “sub-continental regions” and shows separate data for ocean regions.
[Karlen] In attempts to reconstruct the temperature I find an increase from the early 1900s to ca 1935, a trend down until the mid 1970s and so another increase to about the same temperature level as in the late 1930s.
A distinct warming to a temperature about 0.5 deg C above the level 1940 is reported in the IPCC diagrams. I have been searching for this recent increase, which is very important for the discussion about a possible human influence on climate, but I have basically failed to find an increase above the late 1930s.
This region, as I am sure you know, suffers from missing data and large gaps spatially. How one covered both can greatly influence the outcome.
In IPCC we produce an Arctic curve and describe its problems and
character. In IPCC the result is very conservative owing to lack of
inclusion of the Arctic where dramatic decreases in sea ice in recent
years have taken place: 2005 was lowest at the time we did our assessment but 2007 is now the record closely followed by 2008.
Anomalies of over 5C are evident in some areas in SSTs but the SSTs are not established if there was ice there previously. These and other indicators show that there is no doubt about recent warming; see also chapter 4 of IPCC.
[My comment] As I will show below, everything he says about the ocean and the sea ice and the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) is meaningless. The IPCC figure is solely for the land.
[Karlen] In my letter to Klass V I included diagram showing the mean annual temperature of the Nordic countries (1890-ca 2001) presented on the net by the database NORDKLIM, a joint project between the meteorological institutes in the Nordic countries. Except for Denmark, the data sets show an increase after the 1970s to the same level as in the late 1930s or lower. None demonstrates the distinct increase IPCC indicates. The trends of these 6 areas are very similar except for a few interesting details.
Results will also depend on the exact region.
[My comments] I cannot find the NORDKLIM graphic he refers to, so I have calculated it myself. I used the NORDKLIM dataset available at smhi.se. I removed the one marine record from “Ship M”. To avoid infilling where there are missing records, I took the “first difference” of all of the available records for each year and averaged them. Then I used a running sum to calculate the average anomaly. I did not remove cities or adjust for the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Here is the result:
You can see that, as Professor Karlen said, this does not show what the “Northern Europe” part of the IPCC graph shows. It is exactly as Professor Karlen stated, in the NORDKLIM data it rises until 1930, there is a drop from 1930 to 1970, followed by an increase after the 1970s to a temperature slightly lower than the 1930s. (In fact, the rise from 1880 until 1930 dwarfs the recent rise since the 1970’s). Here, for comparison, is a blowup of the “Northern Europe” graph from Fig. 9.12 above:
This claims that there is a full degree temperature rise from 1970 to 2000, ending way warmer than the 1930s. You can see why Professor Karlen is wondering how the IPCC got such a different answer.
[Karlen] I have in my studies of temperatures also checked a number of areas using data from NASA. One, in my mind interesting study, includes all the 13 stations with long and decent continuously records north of 65 deg N.
The pattern is the same as for the Nordic countries. This diagram only shows 11-yr means of individual stations. A few stations such as Verhojans and Svalbard indicate a recent mean 11-year temperature increase up to 0.5 deg C above the late 1930s. Verhojansk, shows this increase but the
temperature has after the peak temperature decreased with about 0.3 deg C during the last few years. The majority of the stations show that the recent temperatures are similar to the one in the late 1930s.
In preparation of some talks I have been invited to give, I have expanded the Nordic area both west and east. The area of similar change in climate is vast. Only a few stations near Bering Strait deviates (e.g. St Paul, Kodiak, Nome, located south of 65 deg. N).
My studies include Africa, a study which took me most of a summer because there are a large number of stations in the NASA records. I found 11 stations including data from 1898-1975 and 16 stations including 1950-2003.
The data sets could in a convincing way be spliced. However, I noticed that some persons were not familiar with ’splicing’ technique so I have accepted to reduce the study to the 7 stations including data from the whole period between 1898-2003. The results are similar as to the spliced data set and
also, surprisingly similar to the variability of the Nordic data.
Regression indicates a minor (if any) decrease in temperature (I have used all stations independent of location, city location or not).
Africa is notorious for missing and inaccurate data and needs careful assessment.
[Karlen] Another example is Australia. NASA only presents 3 stations covering the period 1897-1992. What kind of data is the IPCC Australia diagram based on?
If any trend it is a slight cooling. However, if a shorter period
(1949-2005) is used, the temperature has increased substantially.
The Australians have many stations and have published more detailed maps
of changes and trends.
There are more examples, but I think this is much enough for my present
point:
How has the laboratories feeding IPCC with temperature records selected stations?
See our chapter and the appendices.
[My comment] I have looked at these. The source for Fig. 9.1.2 is given as “(HadCRUT3; Brohan et al., 2006)”. HadCRUT3 is produced jointly by CRU and the Hadley Centre.
[Karlen] I have noticed that major cities often demonstrate a major urban effect (Buenos Aires, Osaka, New York Central Park, etc). Have data from major cities been used by the laboratories sending data to IPCC? Lennart Bengtsson and other claims that the urban effect is accounted for but from what I read, it seems like the technique used has been a simplistic
Major inner cities are excluded: their climate change is real but very
local.
[My comment] It is true that the IPCC Chapter 3 FAQ says this:
Additional warming occurs in cities and urban areas (often referred to as the urban heat island effect), but is confined in spatial extent, and its effects are allowed for both by excluding as many of the affected sites as possible from the global temperature data and by increasing the error range (the blue band in the figure).
To check this claim, I took the list of temperature stations used by CRU (which I had to use an FOI to get), and checked them against the GISS list. The GISS list categorizes stations as “Urban” or “Rural”. It also uses satellite photos to categorize the amount of light that shows at night, with big cities being brightest. It puts them into three categories, A, B, and C. C is the brightest.
It turns out that there are over 500 cities in the CRU database that the GISS database categorizes as “Urban C”, the brightest of cities. These include, among many others:
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
BANGKOK METROPOLIS, THAILAND
BARCELONA, SPAIN
BEIJING, CHINA
BRASILIA, BRAZIL
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND
DHAKA, BANGLADESH
FLORENCE, ITALY
GLASGOW, UK
GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA
HANNOVER, GERMANY
INCHON, KOREA
KHARTOUM, SUDAN
KYOTO, JAPAN
LISBON, PORTUGAL
LUXOR, EGYPT
MARRAKECH, MOROCCO
MOMBASA, KENYA
MOSKVA, RUSSIAN FEDERA
MOSUL, IRAQ
NAGASAKI, JAPAN
NAGOYA, JAPAN
NICE, FRANCE
OSAKA, JAPAN
PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL
SEOUL, KOREA
SHANGHAI, CHINA
SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS
TOKYO, JAPAN
VALENCIA, SPAIN
VOLGOGRAD, USSR
So the CRU is using Tokyo? Beijing? Seoul? Shanghai? Moscow? Their claim is entirely false. In other words, once again the good folk of the CRU are blowing smoke. I can understand why it took me a Freedom of Information request to get the station list.
[Karlen] Next step has been to compare my results with temperature records in the literature. One interesting figures is published by you in:
Trenberth, K., 2005: Uncertainty in Hurricanes and Global Warming. Science 308: 1753-1754.
As you obviously know, the recent increase in temperature above the 1940s is minor between 10 deg N and 20 deg N and only slightly larger above the temperature maximum in the early 1950s. Both the increases in temperature in the 1930s and in the 1980s to 1990s is of similar amplitude and similar steepness, if any difference possibly slightly less steep in the northern area than in the southern (the eddies slow down the warm water
|transport?).
Your diagram describes a limited area of the North Atlantic because you are primarily interested in hurricanes. The complexity of sea surface temperature increases and decreases is seen in e.g. Cabanes, C, et al 2001 (Science 294: 840-842).
As we discuss, there is a lot of natural variability in the North Atlantic but there is also a common component that relates to global changes. See my GRL article with Shea for more details. Trenberth, K. E., and D. J. Shea, 2006: Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L12704, doi:10.1029/2006GL026894.
[Karlen] One example of sea surface temperature is published by:
Goldenberg, S.B., Landsea, C.W., Mestas-Nuoez, A.M. and Gray, W.M., 2001: The recent increases in Atlantic hurricane activity: causes and implications. Science 293: 474-479.
Again, there is a marked increase in temperature in the 1930s and 1950s (about 1 deg C), a decrease to approximately the level in the 1910s and thereafter a new increase to a temperature slightly below the level in the1940s.
One example of published data not supporting a major temperature
increase during recent time is:
Polyakov, I.V., Bekryaev, R.V., Alekseev, G.H., Bhatt,U.S., Colony,
R.L., Johnson, M.A., Maskshtas, A.P. and Walsh, D., 2003: Variability and Trends of Air Temperature and Pressure in the Maritime Arctic, 1875-2000. Journal of Climate: Vol. 16 (12): 2067ñ2077.
He included many more stations than I did in my calculation of
temperatures N 65 N, but the result is similar. It is hard to find evidence of a drastic warming of the Arctic.
It is also difficult to find evidence of a drastic warming outside urban areas in a large part of the world outside Europe. However the increase in temperature in Central Europe may be because the whole area is urbanized (see e.g. Bidwell, T., 2004: Scotobiology – the biology of darkness. Global change News Letter No. 58 June, 2004).
So, I find it necessary to object to the talk about a scaring temperature increase because of increased human release of CO2. In fact, the warming seems to be limited to densely populated areas. The often mentioned correlation between temperature and CO2 is not convincing. If there is a factor explaining a major part of changes in the temperature, it is solar irradiation. There are numerous studies demonstrating this correlation but papers are not accepted by IPCC. Most likely, any reduction of CO2 release will have no effect whatsoever on the temperature (independent of how
expensive).
You can object all you like but you are not looking at the evidence and
you need to have a basis, which you have not established. You seem to
doubt that CO2 has increased and that it is a greenhouse gas and you are
very wrong. But of course there is a lot of variability and looking at
one spot narrowly is not the way to see the big picture.
[My comment] Professor Karlen was quite correct. The claims made by the CRU, and repeated in the IPCC document, were false. Karlen was looking at the evidence.
[Karlen] In my mind, we have to accept that it is great if we can reduce the release of CO2 because we are using up a resource the earth will be short of in the future, but we are in error if we claims a global warming caused by CO2.
I disagree.
[My comment] No comment.
[Karlen] I also think we had to protest when erroneous data like the claim that winter temperature in Abisko increased by 5.5 deg C during the last 100 years. The real increase is 0.4 deg C. The 5.5 deg C figure has been repeated a number of times in TV-programs. This kind of exaggerations is not supporting attempts to save fossil fuel.
I have numerous diagrams illustrating the discussion above. I don’t include these in an e-mail because my computer can only handle a few at a time. If you would like to see some, I can send them by air mail.
I am often asked about why I don’t publish about my views. I have. Just one example of among 100 other I could select is: Karlen, W., 2001: Global temperature forces by solar irradiation and greenhouse gases? Ambio 30(6): 349-350.
Yours sincerely
Wibjorn
Geografiska Annaler
Professor em Wibjorn Karlen
Department of Social and Economic Geography
Geografiska Annaler Ser. A
Box 513
SE-751 20 Uppsala
SWEDEN
I trust that Phil Jones may also respond
Regards
Kevin Trenberth
___________________
Kevin Trenberth
Climate Analysis Section, NCAR
From: P.Jones
To: trenbert
Subject: Re: Climate
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:39:07 +0100 (BST)
Cc: Wibjorn Karlen
[Jones to Professor Karlen, same email]Wibjorn,
I’m in Athens at the moment. Unless you’re referring specifically to the Arctic the temperature curves in IPCC Ch 3 all include the oceans.
[My comment] Absolutely not. The legend for Fig. 9.1.2 (see above) says “(see the Supplementary Material, Appendix 9.C for a description of the regions)” Appendix 9.C in turn describes the calculations:
6. Apply land/ocean mask on observations. Plots describing observed changes in land or ocean areas were based on observed data that was masked to retain land or ocean data only (necessary to remove islands and marine stations not existent in models). This masking was performed as in Step 3, using the land area fraction data from the CCSM3 model.
Note that the ocean is entirely masked out of the observations.
And the regions are described as:
Note 2: List of Regions
The regions are defined as the collection of rectangular boxes listed for each region. The domain of interest (land and ocean, land, or ocean) is also given.
REGION, DESIGNATOR, COVERAGE, DOMAIN
Global, GLO, 180W to 180E, 90S to 90N, land and ocean
Global Land, LAN, 180W to 180E, 90S to 90N, land
Global Ocean, OCE, 180W to 180E, 90S to 90N, ocean
North America, ALA, 170W to 103W, 60N to 72N, land
North America, CGI, 103W to 10W, 50N to 85N, land
North America, WNA, 130W to 103W, 30N to 60N, land
North America, CNA, 103W to 85W, 30N to 50N, land
North America, ENA, 85W to 50W, 25N to 50N, land
South America, CAM, 116W to 83W, 10N to 30N, land
South America, AMZ, 82W to 34W, 20S to 12N, land
South America, SSA, 76W to 40W, 56S to 20S, land
Europe, NEU, 10W to 40E, 48N to 75N, land
Europe, SEU, 10W to 40E, 30N to 48N, land
Africa, SAR, 20W to 65E, 18N to 30N, land
Africa, WAF, 20W to 22E, 12S to 18N, land
Africa, EAF, 22E to 52E, 12S to 18N, land
Africa, SAF, 10E to 52E, 35S to 12S, land
Asia, NAS, 40E to 180E, 50N to 70N, land
Asia, CAS, 40E to 75E, 30N to 50N, land
Asia, TIB, 75E to 100E, 30N to 50N, land
Asia, EAS, 100E to 145E, 20N to 50N, land
Asia, SAS, 65E to 100E, 5N to 30N, land
Asia, SEA, 95E to 155E, 11S to 20N, land
Australia, NAU, 110E to 155E, 30S to 11S, land
Australia, SAU, 110E to 155E, 45S to 30S, land
So no, that excuse won’t wash. Once again Professor Karlan is quite correct. The observations simply don’t match the CRU/IPCC claims. Phil Jones’ story about the regions including the ocean is false.
[Jones] Fennoscandia is just a small part of the NH. When I’m back next week, I’ll be able to calculate the boxes that encompass Fennoscandia, so you can compare with this region. As you’re aware Anders did lots of the update work in 2001-2002 and he included all the NORDKLIM data. I can send you a list of the Fennoscandian data if you want – either the sites used or their data as well.
I guess you’re attachments are in your direct email, which I come to later.
One final thing – we are getting SST data in from some of the new sea-ice free parts of the Arctic. We are not using these as we’ve yet to figure out how to as we don’t have normals for these ‘mostly covered by sea ice in the 1961-90' areas.
Cheers
Phil
[My comments]Now, I have not taken a stand on whether the machinations of the CRU extended to actually altering the global temperature figures. It seems quite clear from Professor Karlen’s observations, however, that they have gotten it very wrong in at least the Fennoscandian region. Since this region has very good records and a lot of them, this does not bode well for the rest of the globe …
My best to everyone,
w.
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
U-CRU
29. November 2009 - 9:06
From Kate at Small Dead Animals: No U-turns allowed
Flashback to April 18th…
Dear Tom,
I find it hard to believe that the British Antarctic Survey would permit the deletion of relevant files for two recent publications or that there aren’t any backups for the deleted data on institutional servers. Would you mind inquiring for me? In the mean time, would you please send me the PP format files that you refer to here for the monthly sea ice data for the 20th century models discussed in your GRL article and the 21st century models referred to in your JGR article.
Regards, Steve McIntyre
Then in July… “Unprecedented” Data Purge At CRU
On Monday, July 27, 2009, as reported in a prior thread, CRU deleted three files pertaining to station data from their public directory ftp.cru.uea.ac.uk/. The next day, on July 28, Phil Jones deleted data from his public file – see screenshot with timestemp in post here, leaving online a variety of files from the 1990s as shown in the following screenshot taken on July 28, 2009.
The Telegraph, today – Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row ….. Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data – dubbed Climategate – have agreed to publish their figures in full….
Now, here comes the other shoe! Hide the Decline!
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.”
[...]
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.
Categorieën: Engels & Skeptisch, Milieunieuws
Telegraph’s Booker on the “climategate” scandal
29. November 2009 - 8:53
Excerpts from the Telegraph:
A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term “Climategate” (Note: Delingpole reports via email he got it from WUWT, commenter Bulldust coined the phrase at 3:52PM PST Nov 19th – Anthony) to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.
The reason why even the Guardian’s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.
Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.
Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the “hockey stick” were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann’s supporters, calling themselves “the Hockey Team”, and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.
…
There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre’s blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt’s blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.
and much much more!
klimatosoof.nl |
