Sea Ice 2012

I have reworked my sea ice code to account for leap years and to make it easier to read.  It wasn’t a terribly easy process but it was useful.   Here I will present some plots of sea ice trend as derived from the gridded satellite data.  The purpose of this was to verify their accuracy and lay groundwork for future posts on sea ice.

Unfortunate statistically significant growth of ice during unprecedented death-spiral sea ice doom.

Circular Reasoning on Rectilinear Propagation of Electromagnetic Radiation

I’ve been spending time working on improved sea ice code.  Anthony Watts asked for something and Steve McIntyre helped find the right R function to get it going. I want to also overlay SST data as well as flow direction in the videos. Hopefully it will lead us to some statistical analysis.

In the meantime JWL has been discussing backradiation on the previous thread. It is an old argument which doesn’t have a lot of entertainment value for some of us. He has put together a pdf which alleges to prove that backradiation (radiation from cold to hot) is impossible in the climate system and has made the claim that nobody has critiqued his math.  I’m going to help him out.

Fun Stuff

A guest post by Dr. Weinstein in response to a post by Dr. Spencer.

EFFECT OF ATMOSPHERIC MASS AND CO₂ ON GROUND TEMPERATURE

Leonard Weinstein, ScD

January 17, 2012

The issue has been raised about the effect of the mass of an atmosphere on surface temperature.  It can be shown that if no optically absorbing gases, aerosols, or clouds are present in the atmosphere, that the average surface temperature will be determined by albedo, absorbed surface solar radiation (ignoring small radioactive heating effects), and outgoing thermal radiation at the ground level, and I will not discuss that issue here. The present discussion only considers an atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and for simplicity only looks at the effect of CO₂ as a greenhouse gas. Only long time average global average values of temperature are considered, and only at long term constant CO₂ levels (i.e., transient responses are ignored).

Some simplifications are made here, as the complete analysis is complex, and requires accurate experimentally measured data values and assumptions that are not well settled. The main simplification I make is the ground temperature sensitivity of the Earth atmosphere to increases in atmospheric CO₂ levels. Values from less than 0.5 C/doubling to over 4 C/doubling have been suggested as the result of CO₂ increase plus all feedback effects, However I am only describing the CO₂ effect independently here, and this has been shown in most studies to give a surface increase of about 1.2 C/doubling of CO₂, ignoring all other effects.

I use here is a mean virtual temperature, T_v~250 K that is based on an average temperature between sea level and approximate average location of outgoing radiation to space. This is an approximation, but its exact value has little effect on the comparison shown later. In addition, I use the wet lapse rate (as found in our lower to mid Troposphere) of -6.5 C per km height, even though I ignored the feedback effect of water vapor and clouds in the atmosphere to simplify the analysis.

In an atmosphere, the height from ground to a particular pressure level can be found from the following equation:

 The value of H, which differs somewhat for different lapse rates, is called the scale height, and is the height where the pressure decreases by a factor of 1/e. I am using here the value of H ~29.3T_v for Earth’s atmosphere (based on the actual measured average atmospheric gas properties and Earth’s gravity), so combining this with the value of T_v   selectedgives H~7.33 km. Changes in this value would be small enough for different assumptions that it would not change the basic result shown here.

I now examine two simplified cases:

1.  The case of a surface pressure of 1 bar (Earth’s actual value), with present amounts of CO₂ (390 ppm), and with the effect of other greenhouse gases, aerosols, or clouds having a constant effect that is independent of atmospheric mass or changes in CO₂, and assuming the same albedo as at present.
2. The case of 2 bars surface pressure, with the same total amount of CO₂ as case 1, but with an added equal amount of a mix of N₂ and or O₂, so that the average specific heat and molecular weight of the atmospheric gases are the same for 1 and 2. The greenhouse heating effect of other greenhouse gases, clouds, and aerosols are considered to be exactly the same as case 1 to separately show the effect of CO₂ alone, and the albedo is still the same as in case 1.

The total effect of the present amount of CO₂ alone on an increase in temperature above the no-greenhouse gas for case 1 is not accurately established, with estimates for CO₂ alone from 5 C to 15 C as compared to the 33 C estimated total greenhouse effect with all gases, clouds, and aerosols. Since some of the CO₂ absorption and radiation wavelengths overlap some of the water vapor wavelengths, the effect of CO₂ in the presence of water vapor is even less addition than if considered alone. I am examining the effect of only CO₂ here. I use an estimated value of the total CO₂ effect of 10 C for the present amount as being reasonable (the exact amount is not important as long as is significantly larger than the effect of one doubling). If case 1 has the same mass atmosphere as the present atmosphere, except the concentration of CO₂ was 0.5 times that of the present (195 ppm), this would have resulted in a reduction of surface temperature of 1.2 C for the lower concentration, ignoring feedback. Case two does has half the concentration of case 1, but also has twice the atmospheric mass, so the total mass of CO₂ is the same for both case 1 and 2, and the only difference is atmospheric mass (and corresponding thickness) of the total atmosphere.  The question is: what does this do to surface temperature?

The atmosphere is considerably thicker for case 2 than case 1 due to having twice the mass of gases, and this raises the altitude of some of the (assumed well mixed) CO₂ a considerable amount. A simple analogy to see the effect is that if a thin unmixed layer of CO₂ containing all the present CO₂ mass in the present atmosphere were forced to lie close over the surface, and most of the atmosphere above it had none, the greenhouse gas effect would only raise the location of outgoing radiation a short distance above the surface. Multiplying the average outgoing altitude by the lapse rate would result in surface temperature increasing only a fraction of the 10 C presently possible for mixed atmospheric CO₂. While the gases would mix eventually up into the atmosphere, this point shows the effect of altitude of the greenhouse gas as also being a factor.

The equation for the relation between pressure and height for p₁/p₂=2 gives a value of (Z₂-Z₁)=5.08 km. Thus the pressure at 5.08 km for case 2 matches the surface pressure for case 1. The fact that a 0.5 change in CO₂ would only change surface temperature 1.2 C implies that it only changes the average location of outgoing radiation by 1.2/6.5= 0.18 km if that were the only factor considered. However, the total change of 10 C possible for all of the CO₂ alone implies the average altitude of outgoing radiation to space for all the CO₂ alone was about 10/6.5=1.54 km. This is nearly an order of magnitude larger than the change due to a 0.5 change of CO₂ (i.e., it is the result of the exponential response).

We thus have case 2 with only 0.5 the CO₂as case 1 in the lower 5.08 km of atmosphere, but where it has the same total mass of the entire case 1 atmosphere. However, we have on top of that, additional atmosphere with the same total mass of atmosphere as all of case 1, and also with 0.5 the CO₂ as all of case 1. This upper layer would be as thick as the entire present case 1 atmosphere. If the upper layer absorbed and radiate all portions of wavelengths absorbed and radiated in the lower 5.08 km, this upper portion alone would have a location (for CO₂ alone) 1.36 km above the 5.08 km level where outgoing radiation occurred. The actual solution of the resulting average altitude would require a full radiation analysis, and is not as high as that oversimplified version. However, it is clear that a thicker atmosphere, even without increasing total greenhouse gases over the thinner case, would have increased surface temperature due to the increased average altitude of outgoing radiation. It is also true that it is not the mass or pressure of the atmosphere alone that causes the increase, it is the combination of average altitude of outgoing radiation and lapse rate, and the increase in mass of atmosphere would raise the average location of outgoing radiation by virtue of thickening the total atmosphere. The final increase in surface temperature is the product of average outgoing altitude (including from the ground, greenhouse gases, clouds and aerosols), and lapse rate.

The Blog Trap

Tom Fuller has started blogging again. He used to post at the SF examiner – until he also quit. Many of you will remember that he and I hold different views on politics but I find him honest and a far better writer than me. According to his email, his new blog will focus on energy and climate and appears to be directed at renewable energy. I’m looking forward to his contributions again and expect he will create a comfortable blogging atmosphere where difficult yet reasoned discussions can be held.

Let this be a lesson to new bloggers, it is a trap!

Tom’s blog (3000quads.com) is here and linked on the right.

Full length NSIDC Sea Ice Data

Below is the full length of the NSIDC SEA ice data. From 2.8 gb of data. The graphs of the Arctic and Antarctic are plotted on equal grid scales having a pixel resolution of 25km. The satellite ice data comes from the NSIDC Sea Ice Concentrations as collected from the Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I Passive Microwave systems.

Improved Sea Ice videos

UPDATE: High speed video from 2004 to present added below.

In response to recent discussions, I’ve taken the time to download the 2.8 gb of data required to plot sea ice.  I found a far better software for video creation called virtual dub.  And I rescaled the graphs so that the Arctic and Antarctic are plotted on equal grid scales.   The pixel resolution is 25km and the satellite ice data comes from the NSIDC Sea Ice Concentrations as collected from the Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I Passive Microwave systems.   This version represents just a few years of the total dataset and is similar to my previous publicaitons.   You may note the higher resolution and frame rate than my previous work.   Currently, I’m compiling the complete video for publication tomorrow.      The purpose of the project is to first visually see if 2009 – 2011 which is not shown here, has similar weather patterns to 2007.  Also, I hope to add sea surface temperature and flow directions to the video – both of which will probably add to our understanding of the sea ice situation.   If I’m lucky, there may be some stats to follow as well.

High speed September 2004 to present:

Boo!

S0 I’m actually getting to where I feel better about things and have begun looking at actual data.  Then I ran across this.

It is a call to action to limit black carbon emissions, a far more sensible thing to attack than CO2, but the article is so insane that I simply refuse to accept that anyone in the world believes it has any attachment to reality.

The Abstract:

Tropospheric ozone and black carbon (BC) contribute to both degraded air quality and global warming. We considered ~400 emission control measures to reduce these pollutants by using current technology and experience. We identified 14 measures targeting methane and BC emissions that reduce projected global mean warming ~0.5°C by 2050. This strategy avoids 0.7 to 4.7 million annual premature deaths from outdoor air pollution and increases annual crop yields by 30 to 135 million metric tons due to ozone reductions in 2030 and beyond. Benefits of methane emissions reductions are valued at $700 to $5000 per metric ton, which is well above typical marginal abatement costs (less than $250). The selected controls target different sources and influence climate on shorter time scales than those of carbon dioxide–reduction measures. Implementing both substantially reduces the risks of crossing the 2°C threshold.

You have got to be completely insane to imagine that a 0.5C warming or the associated pollution will kill a minimum of 700,000 people per year. This is what passes for peer review?!

Jesus…

There is simply no shame in these people’s makeup.  Have you ever witnessed such incredibly blatant and false scare tactics? This actually went into a journal.Perhaps if this is the standard for the AAAS science magazine, it should rename itself Charmin.

Openly Confidential

Steve McIntyre has an interesting post on how certain members of the most controversial sections of Climate Science™ have influenced the openness and transparency of the IPCC.   As usual, he has put considerable time into the effort and discovered a unique chain of events in the public documentation.

The IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation.

We wouldn’t want anyone pointing out that flawed Steig work was being used as a poster boy for global warming until after it was too late right?   After all, Soon and Baliunas needed to go because its method was flawed, not because it was an anti-AGW result.  I’m sure that the Berkeley temperature study will also be treated similarly.

 

 

Oops, we hit average.

Apparently sea ice doesn’t agree with the global warming agenda.  I haven’t looked in months and would love to update the sea ice videos but I have to re-download the GB of data.   Today I took at the Cryosphere site (after literally months) and found this plot:

Sea ice is above average.   Despite my belief in CO2 global warming’s effect, I really don’t believe it has had any scientifically discernible impact on sea ice.  Nutin!!  Now we still believe ice does melt from warmth, at least I don’t think  Climate Science™ has changed that yet (apparently thermometers still have branches), but you need a lot more than a few degrees to melt an Earth pole. The same Sun hating environment that makes Star Wars planet Hoth look like a friendly beach resort.

I’m thinking that after I turn in the useless tax-payer sucking 501C we’ve been discusssing, to no useful effect, I’m going to write a letter to god and turn in the planetary poles for not listening to the government.  God put us on Earth for a reason, and if Earth doesn’t realize it we ought to do something about it.

Yup, still in a funk….

The Truth about Wikipedia

Some wonder why I’m tired and grumpy about climate blogging.  Wikipedia is a great example.   No matter the evidence, they will publish whatever revisionist truth compliments the leftist message.  I  will never contribute to that group although it could have been a wonderful source, it has become a biased propaganda engine of massive size.  They are regularly asking people for contributions at a time when other websites of that size are rife with cash.  Gee, does that sound like any newspapers you know?  Media groups never seem to recognize that it is the message that is not selling, they always blame something else.  Wiki claims that they don’t want adds to influence their content, but a few minutes of review by an unbiased individual reveals that the plain ain’t working.   Today at WUWT, James Padgett has a nice post on the Wikirevisionist article on the Soon and Baliunas incident.  The same SB paper which led to some insane behavior by the paleoclimatologist community which didn’t like the critique of their blatantly unreasonable methodologies.

I’ve been so frustrated with the constant untruths in media and climate science that it is hard to post anything.  Last night I spent a few hours quietly looking back at Ljungqvist 2010 proxies and will likely have a post in the next day or two on that.  It seems somewhat removed from the out-of-control political idiocy disguised as science.  Numbers are calming.

Anyway, check this out.  It is worth a read.

The Wonderful World of Wikipedia

Posted on January 10, 2012 by James Padgett

Guest post by James Padgett

As many readers are aware, the culture surrounding the climate change topic area of Wikipedia has been a microcosm of climate science for nearly a full decade.

This is not a compliment.

When you read the Climategate emails and see discussions of finding people to investigate and discredit your ideological opponents –  that is Wikipedia. When you read about the IPCC’s usage of the WWF and students in composing their Climate Bible (KJV) – that is Wikipedia. When you read about “climate scientists” conspiring to get other scientists fired for challenging the orthodoxy – that is Wikipedia.

In short, Wikipedia does not care about truth, and certainly not doubts, it cares about message.

Read the rest at WUWT.

Where do we draw the line?

In continuation of my investigation of the actions of the tax exempt 501c corporation the “PACIFIC INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENT, AND SECURITY”, I have dug deeper into the tax reporting and operations of Peter Gleick.  It appears that this organization operates completely above IRS law, employing what appears to be 95% government taxpayer money for the purpose of actively campaigning against conservative politicians and organizations. It is by no means the only group to do so but we have to start somewhere.

First, here is an article by President Peter Gleick on PIS letterhead specifically critiquing policies of conservative presidential candidates. climate_bs_award_2011[1]

Gleick is an extremist political activist by any form of the definition you care to propose.  He’s written numerous left wing propaganda pieces on the ‘green’ blog which are so full of pro-leftist disinformation that communist countries probably look to him for his expertise.  Now there is nothing inherently wrong with an organization promoting untruths for a political goal, the 501c’s are a leftist heaven for such things.  There are also conservative versions, but far, far fewer of them.  Conservatives don’t believe in taking government money for these things.  The result though has been a huge imbalance in funding for truth in science rather than the pro-government, pro-AGW, type messages.  Thus, it seems reasonable that we should shine a little light on them here.

Unfortunately for Gleick, he’s taken the process a step further in this years climate BS awards. Instead of complaining about those amazingly stupid conservatives, he’s actually taken the time to name and critique Republican presidential candidates for their positions on global warming.  This was in the last post but is worth reproducing here:

Climate B.S.* from all of the Republican candidates for President of the United States
Is it really necessary to be anti-science in general, and anti-climate science in particular, in order to be nominated to lead the Republican Party in the United States? Apparently, yes, at least in the minds of the Republican presidential candidates or their advisors. These candidates can be split into three groups: those ignorant or uninterested in science and its role in informing policy; those who intentionally distort science because it conflicts with deeply held political or religious ideology; and those who blow with the wind, giving their allegiance to whatever ideology seems most expedient at any given moment. There is some overlap, of course: some candidates, such as Rick Perry, have been in all three groups at various times. The third group includes candidates who have at one time or another held positions more or less consistent with scientific understanding, but who in 2011 adopted anti-scientific positions during their primary campaigns. For example, Gingrich, Romney, and Huntsman, at some point in the past all expressed at least a partial understanding about the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change. Yet all three have now retreated from the scientific evidence to faulty but ideological safe positions demanded by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In October, Romney caved in to conservative pressure and changed his stance on the issue. Just days ago, after pressure from anti-climate-science activists, Gingrich cut a chapter on climate science from a book of environmental essays he had agreed to produce. Ironically, that chapter was to have been written by an atmospheric scientist (Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University) who happens to be an evangelical and speaks regularly to conservative groups. She was also targeted by these activists for personal abuse – a tactic often pursued by climate deniers and contrarians. (For a few of the craziest things the top GOP candidates have said on climate change, see Joe Romm’s recent essay at Think Progress.)

In short, the choice among the Republican candidates on the issue of climate change is scientific ignorance, distain for science, blatant misrepresentation of facts, or naked political expediency, any one of which would make the Republican candidates strong contenders for the 2011 Climate B.S. Award. Combined? They win hands down.

The worst part of the above for my heart, is listing Activist Joe Romm as an honest broker of science.  The guy doesn’t have a scientific cell left in his body. They have all atrophied to raisins under his need to be green no matter the evidence.   Seriously though, 501C’s are specifically prohibited from participation for or against any politician.   This violation of their tax free status cannot be tolerated but we have to report it and then it is up to the IRS to determine whether they should be properly prosecuted.   Steve McIntyre took the time to see how the PIS group filed last year and noted the boxes indicating that the group had not campaigned for any candidate in 2010. The above quote is from an article dated1/5/2012 so is the tax exempt group ok until 2013 when they will undoubtedly declare they are tax exempt for 2012?

Here is a list of rules from the US government regarding 501C (3) corporations:

  What puts a 501(c)(3) status in jeopardy?
When a 501(c)(3) does not file paperwork with the IRS and/or state or misstates its records intentionally, its tax-exempt status can be jeopardized. Additionally, 501(c)(3) organizations cannot engage in the following activities:
• Conducting extensive lobbying;
• Donating a substantial private benefit to individuals or other organizations for uses not aligned with the organization’s 501(c)(3) purpose;
• Providing outsiders or insiders with personal benefits;
• Engaging in any political activity; and
• Having excessive unrelated business income (UBI).

Joe Romm may want to read up on these.

Cornell University actually lists the code.  You can read it in full here.  In the meatime, it looks like many 501c’s are way over the line for what they are allowed regarding their tax exempt status.  Since some formatting came with the text, I’ll put my bold in color below

§ 501. Exemption from tax on corporations, certain trusts, etc.

(a) Exemption from taxation

An organization described in subsection (c) or (d) or section 401 (a) shall be exempt from taxation under this subtitle unless such exemption is denied under section 502 or 503.

(b) Tax on unrelated business income and certain other activities

An organization exempt from taxation under subsection (a) shall be subject to tax to the extent provided in parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter, but (notwithstanding parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter) shall be considered an organization exempt from income taxes for the purpose of any law which refers to organizations exempt from income taxes.

[snip]

(c) List of exempt organizations

The following organizations are referred to in subsection (a):

(1) Any corporation organized under Act of Congress which is an instrumentality of the United States but only if such corporation—

(A) is exempt from Federal income taxes—

(i) under such Act as amended and supplemented before July 18, 1984, or

(ii) under this title without regard to any provision of law which is not contained in this title and which is not contained in a revenue Act, or

(B) is described in subsection (l).

(2) Corporations organized for the exclusive purpose of holding title to property, collecting income therefrom, and turning over the entire amount thereof, less expenses, to an organization which itself is exempt under this section. Rules similar to the rules of subparagraph (G) of paragraph (25) shall apply for purposes of this paragraph.

(3) Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition (but only if no part of its activities involve the provision of athletic facilities or equipment), or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation (except as otherwise provided in subsection (h)), and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.

The phrase ‘Substantial part of the activities’ for propaganda has become a huge hole in the legislation as that means some fraction of the tax free money can be used for propaganda.   Where Gleick (and many others) go wrong is when they list the names of candidates discussing their policies while using our money.

Ok, I’m tired again so rather than break down the tax forms from the PIS institute today, I’ll simply link the information here.  Pacific_Institute_990_tax_10[1].The PIS group has received over two million USD, primarily from government sources over the last 5 years.   This is equivalent to a healthy 10 million dollar company for profits while employing far fewer people for the result.   The two million used by this group in tax represents the full taxation of a healthy 25 million dollar company in the United States.  What also stinks is that all he had to do was build something with the employment level of a couple of gas stations and the guaranteed income of taxpayer money.

Note that in section 4 of his corporate tax return, Gleick asserted to the IRS that his group has participated in NO political campaign activities.

Will the lies about non-political status hold water in their 2011 return?  Considering that the group has turned over 1o million dollars in profits/contributions (mostly government tax money) in the past 5 years, I think they will take their chances!

Brazen Tax Exempt Pacific Action Committee Directly Violates IRS Code During Presidential Campaign!

Judith Curry has a post including the climate BS awards by Peter H. Gleick which purports to correct the record on climate change. You will not be terribly surprised to read these opening sentences:

The Earth’s climate continued to change during 2011 – a year in which unprecedented combinations of extreme weather events killed people and damaged property around the world. The scientific evidence for the accelerating human influence on climate further strengthened, as it has for decades now.

The only time that I know of where climate didn’t change was when Michael Mann invented it. Of course that lack of change is the point of the hockey shtick handle but we will beat that slow-witted monkey on the head some other time. What makes this stink to high heaven is that this PAC is not a political action committee.  It is rather, one of thousands of left wing 501c money funnels which operate tax free while simultaneously pushing a pro-government control high taxation agenda.

After the last US presidential election,  thinking people should not be surprised to see yet another violation of the law ignored by the liberal activists. What stinks is the lack of astonishment in the media.

This is the rule according to the IRS for a non-profit tax free entitiy:

My bold.

To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.

I have read thousands of examples of violations of this rule but this is by far one of the worst in my experience:

The 2011 Winner: Climate B.S.* from all of the Republican candidates for President of the United States

Is it really necessary to be anti-science in general, and anti-climate science in particular, in order to be nominated to lead the Republican Party in the United States? Apparently, yes, at least in the minds of the Republican presidential candidates or their advisors. These candidates can be split into three groups: those ignorant or uninterested in science and its role in informing policy; those who intentionally distort science because it conflicts with deeply held political or religious ideology; and those who blow with the wind, giving their allegiance to whatever ideology seems most expedient at any given moment. There is some overlap, of course: some candidates, such as Rick Perry, have been in all three groups at various times. The third group includes candidates who have at one time or another held positions more or less consistent with scientific understanding, but who in 2011 adopted anti-scientific positions during their primary campaigns. For example, Gingrich, Romney, and Huntsman, at some point in the past all expressed at least a partial understanding about the reality and seriousness of human-caused climate change. Yet all three have now retreated from the scientific evidence to faulty but ideological safe positions demanded by the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In October, Romney caved in to conservative pressure and changed his stance on the issue. Just days ago, after pressure from anti-climate-science activists, Gingrich cut a chapter on climate science from a book of environmental essays he had agreed to produce. Ironically, that chapter was to have been written by an atmospheric scientist (Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University) who happens to be an evangelical and speaks regularly to conservative groups. She was also targeted by these activists for personal abuse – a tactic often pursued by climate deniers and contrarians. (For a few of the craziest things the top GOP candidates have said on climate change, see Joe Romm’s recent essay at Think Progress.)

Just in case you think there is some wiggle room for the political agnosticism of this activist group, the next paragraph in their “unbiased” and politically neutral article should clear it up for you:

In short, the choice among the Republican candidates on the issue of climate change is scientific ignorance, distain for science, blatant misrepresentation of facts, or naked political expediency, any one of which would make the Republican candidates strong contenders for the 2011 Climate B.S. Award. Combined? They win hands down.

Why is it acceptable for an obviously political organization to take literally millions in funding from government donors for the purpose of promoting extremist, left-wing, anti-capitalist propaganda?

The PAC group had $581,000 USD in donations in 2010 ALONE!-after tax.  What percentage came from taxpayers?

Agency for International Development $13512

Bureau of Reclamation $14,670

California Public Utilities Commission $25,808

Community Water Center $8,453

Department of Water Resources $73,716

Institute for Social and Environmental Transition $30,487

United Nation Global Compact Foundation $98,145

United Nation Water Mandate $11,198

United Nation Environment Program $32,782

University of Berkeley $ 19,137

State of California Environmental Protection Agency $18,107

Water Reuse $$38,811

It is absolutely sickening to understand that 66% (  $384,466 USD. )  of the revenues of this blatantly political organization are taken at literal gunpoint from American taxpayers.  The money is being DIRECTLY spent for political propaganda in a campaign year!  The ‘bosses’ work for this group part time of course, lining their pockets with a couple hundred K of candy while simultaneously working other committees.  After all, the board of directors must be paid.

How stupid are we!

Jesus………

Grumpy Blogger

It is hard to have any emotion about climate these days. It is like I’ve reached the end of the road and can see over the edge of the cliff. All is in view as far as you can see. They call it green but after Climategate 2.0, all I see is brown.

Pound on more Mannian style math or random proxies, sure -can do, but why? Beat up on a little more Berkeley surface temperature studies, sure, can do. The data dicing is fantastic low hanging fodder. Again, why? Even Judith Curry has not responded to me on the simpler topic of CI. Not even a sentence. What is the point of wasting my limited time on these adventures if the geniuses won’t listen to reason. Beat up on the IPCC for reposting extremist crap? Sure, again easy fodder. How about “renewable” energy – the big anti-entropy lie. Fun stuff, but again why?

Tough times for a technical climate blogger. Lots of the same crap, trees ain’t thermometers, ice ain’t melting, sea level ain’t rising from CO2, no more hurricanes, Antarctic and Arctic ice will still be there, on and on and on. Why not shut down industry!?

There we go.

Disaster Files – WG II “Impacts” zero order draft files released.

A large set of from the AR5 IPCC zero order draft files was released at the Galloping Camel site. These represent working group II Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability chapters aka – disaster files. This section of the IPCC contains some of the most uncertain “work”, which for the survival of their unstated cause, absolutely must be overstated. These drafts typically get toned down, but not eliminated, through the reviews as reasonable heads make comments. Therefore the expected pattern is first those in charge say what they really think, then it gets chopped down over time, a little closer to what could be weakly defensible in a government court. Often in the past, obvious facts have been ignored. Correspondingly and unsurprisingly, this chapter is filled with some of the most extreme global warming conclusions possible in the eyes of a governmental organization operating in the wildly profitable industry of climate science™ alarmism. If you enjoy political propaganda, with a wealth redistribution twist, wrapped in a package only loosely disguised as science, then these are the files for you.

For example the executive summary of Chapter 5 discusses sea level rise:

Sea-level rise of more than one metre by the end of this century poses the single major threat to the coastal areas. More than 200 million people are already vulnerable to flooding by extreme sea levels worldwide and this population could be increased by a factor of 4 due to rising population and coastward migration, especially in Asia. New information is available on the likelihood of increased rates of ocean acidification. Although acidification is being addressed through international mitigation efforts, coastal policies need to address ocean acidification at the local and regional levels. More detailed and useful information would be required for the implementation of such policies.

Here is a plot of sea level not rising at 1m/century.

Perhaps Wikipedia’s conservative bias is preventing the proper sea level graphs from being posted.

Unified Theory of Climate

Kim left a link to an interesting article at WUWT (originally at Tallbloke’s talk shop).   It claims that by integrating convection into the radiative transfer equations, that the surface temperatures of most planets can be calculated.  I’m working on other things (as always) and haven’t had time to thoroughly examine the work but I do have several questions, not the least of which is why a parametrized model with convection built in doesn’t replicate the same thing.   It is an interesting article though and worth considering for those with more time than myself.

Abstract

We present results from a new critical review of the atmospheric Greenhouse (GH) concept. Three main problems are identified with the current GH theory. It is demonstrated that thermodynamic principles based on the Gas Law need be invoked to fully explain the Natural Greenhouse Effect. We show via a novel analysis of planetary climates in the solar system that the physical nature of the so-called GH effect is a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement (PTE), which is independent of the atmospheric chemical composition. This finding leads to a new and very different paradigm of climate controls. Results from our research are combined with those from other studies to propose a new Unified Theory of Climate, which explains a number of phenomena that the current theory fails to explain. Implications of the new paradigm for predicting future climate trends are briefly discussed.

Overconfidence Error in BEST

UPDATE:  The post started as a general review of BEST several days ago including some critiques by others.   As I finished, an error in the CI calculation became apparent to me.  If you are familiar with the work, jump to the section titled Jackknife for the description of that problem.

—-

Finally, a technical post.  As most here know, the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) has released its early results. The media has worked tirelessly to misrepresent the results to the public. I even heard Chicago progressive radio refer to the authors of BEST as denialists who decided they were going to overturn the results of other surface temperature analyses and found that they couldn’t, proving again that global warming is going to doom us all and that skeptics are fools. Really, that’s what mainstream Chicagoan progressives are being told about this. The purpose of the project was actually to create an open and transparent global surface temperature that people can read and critique at will. The authors made it clear in their mission statement which begins with:

Our aim is to resolve current criticism of the former temperature analyses, and to prepare an open record that will allow rapid response to further criticism or suggestions.

A difficult proposition considering the quality and number of the temperature records involved. I have read all four papers including a multiple read of the methods paper to understand some of the more sophisticated points presented. I’ve also read critiques by several bloggers/sceintists some of which I agree with and others which I believe are mistaken, but in the end I don’t believe any of the critiques could possibly have any appreciable effect on the trend results without a surfacestations style analysis of the raw data. The only places I have concern are in the brush-over given to the UHI effect and the obviously over-tight confidence intervals. Even if the CI’s were widened to more correct levels, it wouldn’t change the result and the UHI effect isn’t going to reverse any trend so despite some statistical critique, I believe the result is very close to the actual global surface temperature average minus some unknown amount of warming by UHI.  Still, I do believe that I have identified a specific error in the confidence interval calculation which must be corrected and is discussed below.

More BEST Confidence Interval Discussion

Well, I’ve written to Richard Muller yesterday on this as well as Judith Curry, Richard has yet to acknowledge my email.  We have seen that my previous explanations of the problems in the confidence intervals of the BEST temperature series were confusing for some pretty smart people.  I’m hoping the authors can figure out what I mean but today I wanted to delve a little deeper. The methods paper is here.

On page 17 they are discussing the error calculation methods.  It is a bunch of complex stuff which breaks down to weighting stations that have best correlation to the mean value higher.  Limits were placed on how much a station can be deweighted and upweighted.   The typical error of a point was assigned value ‘e’ as a constant.

The scale of the typical measurement error (𝑒 ≈ 0.55 C)

This is a screen grab of the station weighting section on pages 17 and 18:

Equation 31 limits the weights between 1/13 and 2.

My reasoning for looking deeper into this is because I have yet to receive any reply on the issues of weighting and their effect on the Jackknife calculation. I’ve become more convinced than ever that the problem is real and it will absolutely require a re-write of the CI portion of the paper. I was going to attempt to improve my explanation and started digging deeper into the equations presented.

The way I read the weighting section now, stations are estimated measured for variance from the weighted mean. Weights are re-calculated from this variance and the mean is recomputed from the weighted data. The process is repeated until some convergence threshold is met or the number of iterations is met. The claim by the paper is that the average station weight should be near 1 according to their definition but the actual result after iteration may be a bit different. There appears to be more room for deweighting stations by the equations than for overweighting.

Considered Critique of Berkeley Temp Series

I will leave this alone for another week or two while I wait for a reply to my emails to the BEST group, but there are three primary problems with the Berkley temperature trends which must be addressed if the result is to be taken seriously.  Now by seriously, I don’t mean by the IPCC which takes all alarmist information seriously, but by the thinking person.

1 – Chopping of data is excessive.   They detect steps in the data, chop the series at the steps and reassemble them.   These steps wouldn’t  be so problematic if we weren’t worrying about detecting hundredths of a degree of temperature change per year. Considering that a balanced elimination of up and down steps in any algorithm I know of would always detect more steps in the opposite direction of trend, it seems impossible that they haven’t added an additional amount of trend to the result through these methods. Steve McIntyre discusses this here. At the very least, an examination of the bias this process could have on the result is required.

2 – UHI effect.  The Berkeley study not only failed to determine the magnitude of UHI, a known effect on city temperatures that even kids can detect, it failed to detect UHI at all.  Instead of treating their own methods with skepticism, they simply claimed that UHI was not detectable using MODIS and therefore not a relevent effect.

This is not statistically consistent with prior estimates, but it does verify that the effect is very small, and almost insignificant on the scale of the observed warming (1.9 ± 0.1 °C/100yr since 1950 in the land average from figure 5A).

This is in direct opposition to Anthony Watts surfacestation project which through greater detail was very much able to detect the ‘insignificant’ effect.

Summary and Discussion
The classification of 82.5% of USHCNv2 stations based on CRN criteria provides a unique opportunity for investigating the impacts of different types of station exposure on temperature trends, allowing us to extend the work initiated in Watts [2009] and Menne et al. [2010].
The comparison of time series of annual temperature records from good and poor exposure sites shows that differences do exist between temperatures and trends calculated from USHCNv2 stations with different exposure characteristics. 550 Unlike Menne et al. [2010], who grouped all USHCNv2 stations into two classes and found that “the unadjusted CONUS minimum temperature trend from good and poor exposure sites … show only slight differences in the unadjusted data”, we found the raw (unadjusted) minimum temperature trend to be significantly larger when estimated from the sites with the poorest exposure sites relative to the sites with the best exposure. These trend differences were present over both the recent NARR overlap period (1979-2008) and the period of record (1895-2009). We find that the partial cancellation Menne et al. [2010] reported between the effects of time of observation bias adjustment and other adjustments on minimum temperature trends is present in CRN 3 and CRN 4 stations but not CRN 5 stations. Conversely, and in agreement with Menne et al. [2010], maximum temperature trends were lower with poor exposure sites than with good exposure sites, and the differences in
trends compared to CRN 1&2 stations were statistically significant for all groups of poorly sited stations except for the CRN 5 stations alone. The magnitudes of the significant trend differences exceeded 0.1°C/decade for the period 1979-2008 and, for minimum temperatures, 0.7°C per century for the period 1895-2009.

The non-detection of UHI by Berkley is NOT a sign of a good quality result considering the amazing detail that went into Surfacestations by so many people. A skeptical scientist would be naturally concerned by this and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to say the least that the authors aren’t more concerned with the Berkley methods. Either surfacestations very detailed, very public results are flat wrong or Berkeley’s black box literal “characterization from space” results are.  Someone needs to show me the middle ground here because I can’t find it.

I sent this in an email to Dr. Curry:

Non-detection of UHI is a sign of problems in method. If I had the time, I would compare the urban/rural BEST sorting with the completed surfacestations project. My guess is that the comparison of methods would result in a non-significant relationship.

3 – Confidence intervals.

The confidence intervals were calculated in this method by eliminating a portion of the temperature stations and looking at the noise that the elimination created. Lubos Motl described the method accurately as intentionally ‘damaging’ the dataset.  It is a clever method to identify the sensitivity of the method and result to noise.  The problem is that the amount of damage assumed is equal to the percentage of temperature stations which were eliminated. Unfortunately the high variance stations are de-weighted by intent in the processes such that the elimination of 1/8 of the stations is absolutely no guarantee of damaging 1/8 of the noise. The ratio of eliminated noise to change in final result is assumed to be 1/8 and despite some vague discussion of monte-carlo verifications, no discussion of this non-linearity was even attempted in the paper.

Prayer to the AGW gods.

All that said, I don’t believe that warming is undetectable or that temperatures haven’t risen this century. I believe that CO2 helps warming along as the most basic physics proves. My objection has always been to the magnitude caused by man, the danger and the literally crazy “solutions”. Despite all of that, this temperature series is statistically speaking, the least impressive on the market. Hopefully, the group will address my confidence interval critiques, McIntyre’s valid breakpoint detection issues and a more in depth UHI study.

Holding of breath is not advised.

Problems With Berkeley Weighted Jackknife Method

Well I’ve heard nothing from the Berkeley temperature team (BEST) on my critique of the CI calculation method. As promised, I waited a couple of weeks before starting to publish any demonstrations of the problem. Like Mannian statistics, this one stuck out to me like a sore thumb. They used a neat method to estimate the confidence interval through the algorithm but in the process accidentally violated the main assumptions of the method they used.  It is described below in the image grabbed from the methods paper.

As I have written before, Equation 36 is based on the premise that the last term is truly 7/8 of the data. Having no response yet to my critique, I thought it would be worthwhile to make a simple example of the problem for demonstration here. The BEST algorithm works by weighting data closer to the mean greater than data far from the mean. The intent is to weight the better quality stations ahead of the rest. The result, however, may be quite a bit different than the intent.

Great White Hunter

Well the air is ice cold and the animals are hard to find in Michigan’s upper peninsula.  That doesn’t mean that the company isn’t great and the effort isn’t there.   For all our efforts, the camp saw dozens of doe a few bucks and some good fun.  I’ve been asked if we drank the time away.  While there is some alcohol at our camp, the atmosphere is more serious than that.   Stands, scents, methods, and long periods of very quiet time in the woods.  The trip consists of, walking until you are tired, moving firewood, showering outdoors, clearing spaces for blinds, hiking followed by black-capped chickadees landing on your equipment, snowy owls, partridge, squirrels, cyotes etc.

I would recommend that everyone spend several days in the cold weather watching wilderness by themselves every year. Self discovery, separation from our modern life and time spent in a different mode of existence are seriously undervalued in today’s world. My hunting skills rival those of most engineer basketball players (I don’t intentionally play basketball) but it is a good time full of learning.  It is amazingly difficult to sit still on a painfully cold morning and hope you don’t make too much noise for the wildlife.  When you get it right, your immediate neighbors are numerous.  A good snow/rain and the silence becomes incredible.

In all, the weather variations were tremendous.  T-shirt weather followed two days later by 8 inches of snow.

I like to tell my wife how bad the food was but one night we had salmon on a cedar plan(c)k. on another we had beef steaks, so it kind of messes up my story.  Perhaps honesty is a bad policy in this case.

By the time I went home I had seen a lot of un-shootable dear, eaten a lot of food and was very ready to get back to work.   Still, there is this unshakable sense that the incredible stupidity of the modern world can’t get me down.

I saw no shootable deer but a ten point walked shamelessly through camp the day before season started.  My dad was talking with Mark (another hunter) who was explaining that in the past two weeks he had seen not one deer.  They were talking outside when a huge beast walked by.  “There’s a deer”, dad said.  Mark tore down the road with a bow in his hand and came close  to a shot when the deer crossed the road but no dice.

Later I asked if the deer walked through camp with its tongue out but deer with an attitude don’t normally live to grow 10 points in the UP of Michigan.

Climategate 2.0

Files can be downloaded here.

h/t – kurthbemis  Mirror up at: http://dump.kurthbemis.com/climategate2/

—-

 

UEA Responds – And it’s the expected BS.   Out of context before we put them in context.  I suppose that if you aren’t a certified UEA climatologist, you can’t read.   I guess I’m probably not welcome at climate school there.  Thanks to WUWT again for the link.

Tue, 22 Nov 2011

While we have had only a limited opportunity to look at this latest post of 5,000 emails, we have no evidence of a recent breach of our systems.

If genuine, (the sheer volume of material makes it impossible to confirm at present that they are all genuine) these emails have the appearance of having been held back after the theft of data and emails in 2009 to be released at a time designed to cause maximum disruption to the imminent international climate talks.

This appears to be a carefully-timed attempt to reignite controversy over the science behind climate change when that science has been vindicated by three separate independent inquiries and number of studies – including, most recently, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group.

As in 2009, extracts from emails have been taken completely out of context. Following the previous release of emails scientists highlighted by the controversy have been vindicated by independent review, and claims that their science cannot or should not be trusted are entirely unsupported. They, the University and the wider research community have stood by the science throughout, and continue to do so.

———

From WUWT

UPDATE3: 9:25 AM PST – Having read a number of emails, and seeing this quote from Mike Mann in the Guardian:

When asked if they were genuine, he said: “Well, they look like mine but I hardly see anything that appears damning at all, despite them having been taken out of context. I guess they had very little left to work with, having culled in the first round the emails that could most easily be taken out of context to try to make me look bad.”

——-

It happened again.  I woke up to find a link from FOIA.org on a thread.   Thousands of emails unlocked with 220,000 more hidden behind a password.  Despite the smaller size of the Air Vent due to my lack of time, there were twenty five downloads before I saw it once.  As before, there are some  very nice quotes and clarifications from the consensus.  Below is a guest post in the form of a readme file from the FOIA.org group. – Jeff

/// FOIA 2011 — Background and Context ///

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.

This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches.  A few
remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.

The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons.  We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.

We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such
as…

A little context and a Poll

I’ve been asked to give context to some of the emails.   So far, I have read only a few.   This is one though which should have particular resonance with long time Air Vent or Climate Audit readers.  It was started by a subversive climate denier – Jeff Severinghaus – who happens to have been an Associate professor at the University of California when he asked the exact same questions that we so often ask in “skeptic” blogland.   As you can see, Lord Mann nipped it in the bud as hard as a rabid dog could.

This chain is in reverse order.  I’ve bolded the important bits.  What caught my attention about this email set is that Jeff makes the same arguments that we evil skeptics make about paleo reconstructions.  Non-linearity, loss of sensitivity and the fact that if proxies aren’t tracking temp in the modern era, how can we assume they track historic temps?

All very good quesitons, don’t you think?

I “hardly” see anything which seems damning at all — Michael Mann

UPDATE:

The headline is from here.

MPaul has an excellent email in #1 below.

————

Phil Jones on the deletion of emails:

date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:51:44 +0200
from: Manola Brunet
subject: Re: Omar’s email
to: P.Jones@uea.ac.uk

<x-flowed>
Hola Phil,

Had a smooth trip, almost everything run on time but Brits trains, as
usual, and I just got to Exeter. So replying from the B&B (quite basic
place to stay overnight, but well) and keen to sightseeing into town

For me is clear that likely Omar is the only one in WCDMP working in
several fronts and lines of activity, and MEDARE is just one of his
responsibilities. My guess is he didn’t sent at the end in early summer
the official letters of invitation to de PRs, although I can’t be sure
of this because I recall an email from Serhat Sensoy asking me if
another colleague from his office could attend the meeting. I’ll look at
my  email and PC folders to see if I can find any prove of WMO
invitation letters to this WS. Perhaps he’s right and although he had
got the agreement of the local organisers (Malta’s PR), he didn’t send
such letters. If so, still worse because he had plenty of time to do it
(remember our exchange of emails among the SG and I, that they got you
fed up). Another possibility (I think this is more correct) is he spent
the money he got in Jan/Feb 2009 for organising the WS and now has to
ask again for more money! Well, both explanations: Omar is snowed under
work or he run out of money, can be right, but it’s clear he didn’t
realise people have other things to do and have Agendas. I’m
particularly tired of this kind of informality. Yes, please, try to make
Omar understand that he can’t use (dispose) of people’s time !! I was,
and still am, upset with Omar in particular and with WMO in general.
There is no way such stile of working!

Upside Down Tiljander is BAD — Who knew?

Wow, my whole post vanished. I’ll try again but this is very disappointing.

I’ve read about 5 percent of the emails so far and at this point the main conclusion  I come to is that the scientists are far more skeptical in private than they are in the public.   They don’t say dammit, we know for certain that today’s warming is the greatest ever, they say  that it appears to at least equal the historic level.  They say that they are unsure of the results and often comment that the data isn’t good enough.  This is all in private of course.  What we get in public is the certianty that they are correct.  We get comments from Mann that the finnish varve sediments can be used either way – upside right or down but the emails discuss corrections to published papers for the same problems.  Below are a couple of graphs taken from climate audit.  My blog is acting up so you will see them as I am writing rather than after I’ve finished.

 

This is what Mann had to say about the matter in reply to an official comment by McIntyre and I believe McKitrick on the use of the data in the upside down orientation shown above:

The claim that ‘‘upside down’ data were used is bizarre. Multivariate regression methods are insensitive to the sign of predictors. Screening, when used, employed one-sided tests only when a definite sign could be a priori reasoned on physical grounds. Potential nonclimatic influences on the Tiljander and other proxies were discussed in the SI, which showed that none of our central conclusions relied on their use.

Of course we get an entirely different and correctly skeptical view of using a temperature series upside down from the behind-the-scenes emails below.  My bold.

Mime data

Reader Buffy Minton has done some cool work to extract file attachments with the emails.   This was never done for the original climategate files to my knowledge.

————-

Buffy Minton said

November 24, 2011 at 12:35 pm e

Don’t know if this has already been done before:

Here’s the freshly decoded Mime attachments to the Climategate 2011 emails

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IQEKC5SR

 

Hide the Decline – Howto

There are a lot of interesting emails.  This one is worth calling attention to due to the popularity of hide the decline of Climategate 1 fame.  It’s my bold in the middle.  They chopped off the data and infilled it with temperature data.  This is slightly different than Mann08 but it is to the same effect.  Chop off the series and infill it with preferred data.  In this case though, Tim Osborn says it “may not be defensible”.

Let me just tell you kids, don’t try this trick to hide the decline on your high school science paper.

date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 22:54:31 +0100
from: Tim Osborn <T.Osborn@uea.ac.uk>
subject: progress
to: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk, p.jones@uea.ac.uk

Hi Keith & Phil  (a long one this, as I have an hour to kill!)

We’re making slow-ish progress here but it’s still definitely v. useful.  I’ve
brought them up-to-date with our work and given them reprints.  Mike and Scott
Rutherford have let me know what they’re doing, and I’ve got a preprint by
Tapio Schneider describing the new method and there’s a partially completed
draft   paper where they test it using the GFDL long control run (and also the
perturbed run, to test for the effect of trend and non-stationarities).  The
results seem impressive – and ‘cos they’re using model data with lots of
values set to missing, they can do full verification.  The explained
verification variances are very high even when they set 95% of all grid-box
values to missing (leaving about 50 values with data over the globe I think).

Paleoclimate – Rotten to the core

There is a lot to be said about Climategate 2 emails. Since I’ve focused so much of my time on dendroclimatology, much of the climate science I’ve studied is related to that subject.   This is in no small part due to the influences of Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit.  Often, we skeptics have made the point that trees are terrible thermometers and equally often I’ve wondered if these climatologists understand just how bad the hockey stick reconstructions are. When these issues are discussed here in the open, the believer groups usually stop by and claim that the multiple studies with same or similar results are somehow “verification” of their accuracy. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth.

An important email because it comes from IPCC AR4 Lead Author Richard Alley makes many of the points we stand behind in one single email. This was brought to my attention by reader Kan – #3234. For the most part, emails are included in full in this post for correct context but critical parts have been bolded by me.  As a suggestion, you can read the post by skipping to the bold sections first and then checking the email for correct context.

Repository and Question for the Media

I’m reading endless emails myself. In the meantime, if there are any that readers find particularly important, place the file number and why below. It seems to me so far that this email set fills in some of the holes in the various scientists understanding of the hockey stick curves and their true uncertainty. While I haven’t run across many quotes which might shock the public, it is hard for me to be shocked by these guys anymore. So they chopped and cherry-picked data? Big surprise. It has been standard operating procedure for paleoclimate for some time and was well understood before CG1. That is not a sarcastic comment, it is simply what they do. The machinations they go through to justify the silliness are what make climate blogging fun.

For the readers: Currently this blog has a lot of traffic including a lot of international media. Keep in mind that comments you make will be read by a lot of interested people who probably aren’t as familiar with the issues as you are.

If you are a media member, ask yourself why there are dozens of curves from tree-rings (and various other silly thermometers) proporting to show temperature for the last millennia, and we slow-witted skeptics still want to argue with the consensus. I’ll answer that question in the context of these emails in a post I’m preparing which probably won’t be finished until tomorrow. — Jeff

Provenance of the Decline, a Forensic Analysis

There is much about paleoclimatology we don’t know.  Key among the questions is, “What exactly was done to that innocent, unsuspecting data?”  The stealthy nature of these statistical oddities has led to the practice of an informal new field of blog science which could accurately be called  forensiclimatology.  Long time reader Layman Lurker has discovered an interesting characteristic in Briffa’s famous hide-the-decline series. -  Jeff

Exploring the Divergence Problem in the Briffa01  Timeseires

Guest Post By  – Layman Lurker

Both before and after climategate 2 broke out, there has been ongoing discussion at tAV, Lucia’s and CA about divergence and particularly about whether the 1960 data truncation we saw in the TAR and other Briffa / Osborne publications was justified. It occurred to me during these discussions that an OLS regression of the full, non-truncated Briffa series in question and annual northern hemisphere temperature observations might show evidence of the divergence problem in the residuals. We are fortunate to have a non-truncated version thanks to a climategate (#1) email which Tim Osborne sent to Michael Mann on October 5, 1999 in the lead up to the IPCC TAR. Later on in another email, Osborne sent the data to Mann again but truncated at 1960, explaining that data after this point was unreliable due to the divergence and an apparent loss of temperature sensitivity. This reconstruction was unpublished at the time of the TAR (and was actually tagged as Briffa ’98 in the spaghetti graph), but was later published (truncated) in the 2001 paper: “Low frequency Temperature Variations from a Northern Tree Ring Density Network” in the Jounal of Geophysical Research. This paper also utilized a time series of NH annual temperature observations prepared by Phil Jones which I used for regression analysis in this post. At this point I should note that I have not read Briffa01 which appears to be behind pay wall (abstract here). However the time series data for both the truncated reconstruction, and the annual NH observations, is posted here.

CRU Scientist Excoriated in Open Letter (Climategate continues)

Willis Eschenbach has an open letter at WUWT which absolutely excoriates Phil Climategate Jones for his lies to the public and to Willis. The letter is quite strongly worded, places the FOI lies in context and is worth a read. The critique is strong enough that it extends not only to Phil, but to his teammembers as well as to the kangaroo investigations of Climategate.

I think it is time for the government to find a new panel and see if they can find any wrongdoing this time. Of course they shouldn’t choose more foxes as hen-house guards in the future but that might be asking too much. I’m kidding of course, even if a less blatantly-biased panel was created, the truth is already public and I rather like the fact that the people charged with investigating cliamtegate 1.0 look so stupid.

Dave Holland on Climategate 2.0

Dave Holland, who was widely featured in the CRU emails from his blocked FOIA requests,  has a guest post at Andrew Montford’s blog.  He doesn’t think much of the Muir Russel review’s either and specifically addresses the false claims that the emails were out of context.

The Right Kind of People

UPDATE: Reader Stacey left a bomb in #9 of the thread below.

 

Long time readers here will recognize this theme, new readers can assume it from the URL I’ve been using. The concept of a complete consensus among humans only occurs when a structure bands them together on an opinion. In AGW science, we know for certain that we don’t really know much, therefore a consensus must come from unscientific pressures. I and many others have maintained that government funding has corrupted the science and systematically eliminated dissent at all levels. It is a self-filtering process (not a centrally controlled conspiracy) which ensures that climate scientists have a nearly singular mindset on global warming and a singular cause to crusade for. Scientists are naturally skeptics as the infighting on truly major issues in these emails shows. Discussions are often had in terms of good and bad people, causes and damage. How is it that a paper causes damage? Much of the malfeasance in these emails focuses on mitigation of damage to the ‘message’.

When publicly funded, leaders know that outward appearance is critical to the mission.  In something as big as global warming, the illusion of a perfect consensus must be maintained for the now massive environmental departments and organizations including the IPCC to succeed in their political goals. Probably the single largest message from both climategate releases is the open viewing of the effects this mechanism has on the science itself. Repression of conflicting evidence in exchange for more extreme results.

It is actually humorous reading these guys talk to each other about how skeptics are oil funded and politically motivated followed by the next proposal for 3million euros from the taxpayer. They never seem to notice that the blogs are unfunded or that their cohorts who disagree don’t take oil money and the few who have get values 1/100th of the UEA. There is even an email from Mike Hulme telling greenpeace that the UEA won’t support their extremist attacks on Exxon and a second ‘private’ email telling them that he does. In case you are unaware, Greenpeace has become an openly anti-capitalist group with a stated mission of reigning in capitalism for the purpose of reducing our standards of living. Hulme, and many of his friends, are absolutely political extremists who somehow never seem to notice that they all agree with each other on politics. If you happen to be one who doesn’t agree, well they know how to take care of that little problem.

This first email relates to a paper I haven’t read that very well may have problems, but it shows the filtering process in action. It is a long email but important. I have highlighted a few quotes which help bring my points above into light.

Emails in Order

Buffy Minton who provided the Mime data has produced a spreadsheet of CG1 and CG2 emails in chronological order.  This should be an excellent tool to follow conversations through.

odered emails – xls

odered emails – xlsx

I have the emails locally but if you are interested, combine the spreadsheet with this online search engine.

 

Extremist Weather

UPDATE:  I have a couple of timely images from a shocking post at WUWT which relate to my comments below.

From NCDC and WUWT

I have seen this highlighted at other blogs but I don’t think I’ve seen its subject matter discussed outside of the obvious ‘everyone has the same opinion at the UEA’ quote.

date: Mon Aug 23 15:52:14 2004
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: Tonight with Trevor Macdonald
to: “Murphy Melissa   (COMM) k816″

Melissa,
There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views – at least not a   climatologist.    It would also look odd if the two people interviewed with opposite views were from UEA.   Maybe you should reply and say we can’t find one, saying that most climate experts   would   take the same view as Dave. The programme could easily dredge someone up, but they wouldn’t be an expert on the climate. This is the whole point of the debate recently. The  people the media find to put the contrary view are not climate experts.
Phil
At 14:54 23/08/2004, you wrote:

Hello All,
Next Monday night the “Tonight with Trevor Macdonald” show will be about climate change. Dr David Viner is going to be featured on the show,  presenting his view that recent extreme weather is due to global warming. I  have received a call from David Reddings who is part of the show’s team,   asking if we have a climate expert who has a different view to Dr Viner – perhaps believing that recent weather has not been caused by global warming  but is merely part of the ‘natural variability’ of the weather. Do we have  someone at UEA?

Regards,
Melissa.
Melissa Murphy
Communications Assistant
Press & PR Office
Communications Division
University of East Anglia
Norwich, NR4 7TJ
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich
—————————————————————————-

Extreme weather is one of the biggest BS claims of climate science.  There have been no detected extreme weather changes since AGW began that I’m aware of.  What’s more is that there is no connection yet to the tenths of a degree of warming we’ve measured.  It is fantastically insane to imagine that a few tenths of a degree are going to create a noticeable difference in weather.  We can barely detect the temp change.  The whole concept is so asinine by itself that I can’t even imagine listening to it.  Why then do scientists people keep trying to say it?

Money.  They need damage for their AGW political and economic goals to be funded well.  It doesn’t matter one bit that the data don’t show any differences and no physical attribution has been proven, they need it so they say it.   If there were 4C of sudden warming, maybe we find some change but we’ve seen 0.8C so how the hell will that be noticeable in the hurricane or tornado patterns.   Hell, until satellites were used, we couldn’t even detect all the hurricanes.  We still don’t pick up all the tornadoes.

Crazy people with an agenda.

These aren’t my views only, many scientists have made these points in various fashion.  It is absolutely false that you can’t find a climate expert to make the statement that extreme hurricanes, droughts, rain, tornadoes haven’t been detected.  We all have read them including Jones.  He is simply presenting his fantasy to the media for some unstated purpose.

The Root of All

There is simply too much to read these days.  Andrew Montford has an amazing post up on some of the big $$ in AGW, the right people and behind-the-scenes activities at UEA all piled into context.

 

UEA – Sleeping with the enemy

The majority of this post was left on a previous thread by Justthefacts.    Mike Hulme is not above taking exxon money as he shows in the emails further down this post.  He even suggests using the money for funding uncertainty studies etc.rather than their intended science.  I suppose that ESSO wasn’t aware that Hulme is a political extremist who by these emails regularly associates with Greenpeace. The email below is just one of many examples of Hulme’s background.

date: Fri Apr 30 15:32:41 2004
from: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@uea.ac.uk>
subject: public statements
to: a.minns

Asher,
Below are two responses to Doug Parr at Greenpeace about their stop Esso campaign.  They
wanted a statement.  The first is what John and I agreed should be a Tyndall statement.
   The second is what I personally said to Doug.
Is this relevant for Future Forests?
Mike
===============================================
“The Tyndall Centre has a general policy of not officially endorsing the sort of campaign
Greenpeace is running against ExxonMobil.  Individual scientists in the Centre will take a
range of views on such campaigns and we do not believe that a Centre-wide position should
be developed on every issue like this that arises.  On the other hand, the Centre clearly
recognizes that business organizations play very differing roles in the search for
sustainable solutions to climate change and that their interaction with the scientific
process and policy development also varies.
The Tyndall Centres primary role as a publically-funded research organisation is to advance
understanding of climate change and its implications for society and to communicate these
advances in knowledge effectively to a wide range of audiences.  The Tyndall Centre
therefore challenges poor or incorrect science wherever we find it (and we have done so for
example in the case of some science sponsored by ExxonMobil).  We also engage with many
different stakeholders in exploring with them the implications of different climate change
response strategies and policies.  For this reason we do not believe that boycotting any
organization benefits the work of the Centre, although there may well be occasions when we
engage with them in vigorous debate about the options open to society to manage climate
change.
I hope this helps a little explain the Centres position  as individuals, however, I know
that we both have some sympathy with Greenpeaces efforts with ExxonMobil.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Mike Hulme
Professor John Schellnuber
=================================================
11 March 2004
I do indeed support the campaign to boycott Esso (ExxonMobil).  I do not purchase petrol
from this company, and have not done so for more than 2 years now.  This corporation
   (whatever its motives  and I cant judge these), has consistently ignored, undermined or in
   other ways distorted, the emerging international scientific knowledge which clearly points
towards a significant and growing human influence on global climate through our emissions
of greenhouse gases.  It is my personal view that this reality and future prospect requires
serious and sustained efforts on the part of all nations, organizations and individuals to
reduce the underlying causes of human-induced climate change.  ExxonMobils position and
explicit political lobbying thwarts rather than progresses such actions.
Mike Hulme

Below tells a different story It is copied here with the bold from tAV comment thread and was written by Justthefacts.  –Jeff

A public note for UEA, RC and other advocacy groups

I felt it was important at this stage of Climategate that I give some opinions and express where I’m at personally in this whole mess.  I started blogging on climate with a true interest in the science and numbers.  There is no question that I’ve been critical of the politically leftist nature of the environmental movement in general and I had been skeptical of the IPCC for its intentionally bias-creating structure.   It is clear that the IPCC can’t exist without extreme, dangerous climate change which requires expensive solutions.  Without that the group fails to continuously attract funding for the other groups.  Still, that is a completely separate issue from data, statistics and methods.  Since my introduction to climate science, I have been exposed to numerous flatly false statistical techniques which are often simply accepted by the science as long as the message is right.  Shrinking fish, goofy coral papers, false model comparison papers, ridiculous paleo work on and on…. I do not accept the claim that climate scientists believe that selecting preferred data doesn’t automatically bias the results.  Most high school students would be able to tell you that.  Why the community won’t reject them is now crystal clear.

These emails are actually far worse than the previous batch because we can see the bias in operation through the completeness of numerous conversations, funding discussions, blocked peer review, deletion of emails, promotion of the right kind of people and denial that anything is wrong. It shows the ugly underbelly of a single-minded group of people who have the firm belief that they are right and that it does not matter if data needs to be massaged to prove it.  Soon and Baliunas could not set-back a healthy scientific field by decades with a single paper.  In a healthy science, a paper strong enough to change opinions would be pushing it forward. From the emails and papers, the paleoclimatologists featured are convincingly not scientists and I beleive the same is true for many modelers who don’t seem to realize the models are running hot. Throughout these emails the featured advocates continually tweak, massage, adjust, reject and modify anything which takes away from the extremist message of Anthropogenic Global Warming.  Real Climate website has made the claim that nothing important is in these emails but it is clear from some of the authors featured position in the emails (and the false claim) that RC authors are not in any way qualified to judge.  They are so close to their friends good intentions that they have even taken the position that there is nothing at all wrong with selecting the preferred data or adjusting the curves to show what you want.

This is not science.

Swing and a Miss

Well the NOAA almost got it right.  Actually, I’m not sure what this is in reference to other than some funding which should have been saved.

 

date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 08:05:58 -0400
from: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@virginia.edu>
subject: Re: talk
to: Keith Briffa

thanks a bunch Keith,
This sounds interesting–looking forward to hearing more about this latest analysis…
talk to you soon,
mike
At 03:40 AM 6/24/2004, Keith Briffa wrote:

Well done Mike
in case you think I was slacking , I spent the last two days embroiled in Degree
scrutiny/committee (and evenings wining and dining external examiners!). Hope to send
some stuff on our reworking of the Esper et al.analysis for your opinion soon. What are
the real chances of a change of heart on the Palaeo stuff?
Very best wishes
Keith
At 22:46 23/06/2004, you wrote:

Hi Keith,
I think the talk went well received this morning. Thanks a bunch for your input. Peck,
Mark Cane, and I all spoke in the paleo session. Hopefully we might have make some
     progress in convincing NOAA not to cut paleo. Will have to see what happens…
Hope all is well w/ you. Talk to you again soon,
mike
____________________________

Hide more decline

The big news today seems to be Steve McIntyre’s recent discovery that the Briffa series in print has been chopped back in a Mann paper even further than advertised to hide “more” decline.  Amazingly, no mention was made of the radical surgery.

Steve Writes -

Had Mann and his 13 co-authors shown the Briffa reconstruction, without hiding the decline, one feels that von Storch (and others) might have given more consideration to Soon et al’s criticism of the serious problem arising from the large-population failure of tree ring widths and density to track temperature.

I can’t hear you

This email demonstrates again exactly why hockey stick temperature curves are all crap.

Bo Christiansen wrote an email (copy below)  on March 16 2009, stating in no uncertain terms, what I have written here dozens of times.  You can’t regress extremely noisy data on a short series (temperature range) and then project it 2000 years into the past.  When the noise approaches the level of (or in the case of paleowhackology, actually dominates over) the signal, you will have a loss of variance in the historic signal in comparison to the calibration range.   Loss of variance means, no big changes in historic temp.  It seems pretty obvious to me that this is what happens, but in the paleo world, it is nearly completely ignored.  The problem is so severe that Mann published a paper in 07 which attempts to cover it up.  I use the words, ‘cover it up’ with care as it is based on a lot of experiences and it is my true opinion. Unsurprisingly, he used artificial data which conveniently had the right kind of noise and as so often happens in paleoclimate – he just barely missed detecting the problem.

Real Science?

WUWT (a.k.a. the center of the internet) has a post on Trenberth stating that a hurricane disaster non-believer should be fired.   We have to keep the free- thinking scientists in line with the message after all.

Here is a section of the post:

I responded to his earlier message in a fairly low key fashion. I think he
has behaved irresponsibly and ought to be fired by NOAA for not have an openenough mind to even consider that climate change might be affecting
hurricanes. I am quickly becoming outraged by this and I hope it backfires on
him!!!!
Kevin
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Martin Manning wrote:
> Dear Phil and Kevin
>
> Today Susan received a copy of some correspondence between Chris Landsea and Dr Pachauri regarding coverage of hurricanes and global warming by the IPCC. Although we were aware that Dr Landsea was raising the issue
> generally, we were not aware of the approach to Dr Pachauri and it is
> perhaps unfortunate that this was not referred to Susan.
>
> However, Susan would now like to consider a further appropriate response to
> Dr Landsea and she has asked me to ask you to wait for that before you
> consider any possible response of your own (assuming that you have seen the
> correspondence anyway?).
>
> Thanks
> Martin
>
> –
> Dr Martin R Manning

And a relevant graph by Ryan Maue below.  Note the lack of hurricane strength in recent years.

Their Words

They call us skeptics, deniers, fossil fuel funded, contrarians, anti-science, all because we criticize the IPCC, the hockey stick plots, temperature record quality, biased peer review, and the general politicizing that climate science has undergone. Don’t take it from me though, Climategate II explains the same things in the words of the scientists themselves.

In this post, I’ve posted a large number of quotes from the emails and other online sources which I have been gradually gathering for several days now. The consensus duma will say they are out-of-context so if you question that, check the numbers or links next to the comments. It is not possible that they could ALL be out-of-context but there are many  statements from climate science which leave me wondering. This post is started out with a quote from noted scientist Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog and it continues on with quotes from the consensus. All of whom are actual climate scientists.

Be sure that there are many more quotes in these emails. I am only one person and the documentation takes time. If there are more to add to the list (there are) just quote the email number and a few sentences below. No need to copy the whole email. Those interested enough will look it up anyway. I didn’t cover the FOIA and peer review issues here but hope to add them to this list in the future.

The IPCC

From the organization statement: http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.shtml

Because of its scientific and intergovernmental nature, the IPCC embodies a unique opportunity to provide rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers. By endorsing the IPCC reports, governments acknowledge the authority of their scientific content. The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive.

Roy Spencer -on his blog regarding the IPCC

Unfortunately, there is no way to “fix” the IPCC, and there never was. The reason is that its formation over 20 years ago was to support political and energy policy goals, not to search for scientific truth. I know this not only because one of the first IPCC directors told me so, but also because it is the way the IPCC leadership behaves. If you disagree with their interpretation of climate change, you are left out of the IPCC process. They ignore or fight against any evidence which does not support their policy-driven mission, even to the point of pressuring scientific journals not to publish papers which might hurt the IPCC’s efforts.

The Gaiamas Spirit

Trenberth emials a progressives version of the first Noel made up  by a NCAR group incorporating the lead authors of the IPCC AR4.  It seems appropriate for the time of year.

#0462

Sung to tune of The first Noel

Our First Nobel

Our First Nobel, for the IPCC,
Goes to Beth, Bette, Bill, Jerry, Kathy and Guy.
Kevin, Linda, Paty, Re-to and so many more,
And we’re sharing the honor with Mister Al Gore.
Nobel, Nobel, a story to tell,
We hope our coworkers’ egos don’t swell.

The First Working Group said to sound the alarm,
Rising CO2 levels are causing great harm.
Temperatures and greenhouse gas are racing up neck and neck,
Soon the whole Earth will be hotter than heck.
Nobel, Nobel, the planet’s unwell,
This is the future the models foretell.

The Second Working Group said that change is assured,
>From the melting of glaciers to migration of birds.
>From loss of land and crops to habitats,
How can they make it much clearer than that?
Nobel, Nobel, the oceans swell,
Polar bears search for new places to dwell.

We must work to mitigate, tells us Working Group Three,
Change from fossil consumption to clean energy.
If we all do our share in reversing the trend,
Our children might have a clean Earth in the end.
Nobel, Nobel, sound the warning bell,
Let’s make a future where all can live well.

Nobel, Nobel, we are stars for a day,
Can an Oscar be far away?

Warming Up

You might think Climategate 2.0 is losing wind due to the light coverage by the media and the “out-of-context” dismissal by Real climate before anyone made any context.  In fact I believe the opposite is happening.  Several new articles are out today and more will be coming as the media begins to grasp that unlike stopping the use of fossil fuel, the story is financially viable. In the meantime, can someone tell the great communicators of climate science that you can’t state out-of-context before someone gives them context. Sometimes I really think that they would best serve their open advocacy by not writing anything at all.

This first article is from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.  It is very well written and a fun popular science style read of the story as we currently know it.

This second article is at the strata-sphere site and it features some of what I’ve written as well as a considerable amount of additional emails placed in context.

Just to give a flavor of what is being said by our unbiased media, here is a dismissal by Discover.  Read it at your own risk:

Climategate 2: More ado about nothing. Again.

However, it was clear to anyone familiar with how research is done that this was complete and utter bilge; the scientists were not trying to hide anything, were not trying to trick anyone, and were not trying to falsely exaggerate the dangers of climate change.

AAAS.org published this dismissal disguised as reporting:

There’s nothing really new in a second massive cache of e-mails

Planetsave doesn’t do terribly well either and took the time to lie about the committee coverage in blogs. Good for them.

In each of these reports the CRU was found free of any wrong-doing, if maybe a little silly from time to time.

Unsurprisingly, none of that has been made known by those currently enjoying their second 2 minutes in the spotlight.

What is amazing is that these three dismissive articles all came within 1 day of the email release.  I’ve read these as diligently as anyone and even by Dec 4, am only through a fraction of the mess.

I have to add that I’m really not enjoying reading these emails.   It stinks that we have to piece together mountains of rubbish so that the public can understand the meaning of what is going on.  I would rather be a climate blogger than a climategate blogger but with this new context, I am happy to do any work which exposes the foul play.

This is going to keep growing for a while.

Consensus Media

I hope people realize that we have 5 times the emails of Climategate 1.0.  The reading required is extraordinary and the story is far from done.  I’ve got enough material for dozens of posts now and am working very hard to condense them into meaningful statements.  In the meantime, things like this email jump out at you which just remind you the size of the machine that the global warming movement is.

Often we here the mantra of skeptics having the ear of Right Wing media, oil funded and the like…. Well here is an email from a reply to Soon and Baliunas who had the gall to conclude something outside of the consensus.

#2630

     All,
We issued the press release at 3:40 p.m. EDT Monday, July 7. It was sent to 900 science
writers worldwide on our distribution list and posted on EurekAlert!, the AAAS web site
for science press releases.
Almost immediately, we received requests for the full article from The New York Times,
     USA Today, National Public Radio, Toronto Star, San Jose Mercury News, Cox Newspapers,
     Richmond Times-Dispatch, and four freelancers. It was too late for most Europeans to
receive the release Monday, so we expect additional requests Tuesday morning.
Thanks to all for your help.
Harvey
–
Harvey Leifert
Public Information Manager
American Geophysical Union
2000 Florida Avenue, N.W.

And then:

At 09:45 AM 7/11/2003 -0400, Harvey Leifert wrote:

Mike and Phil,
Perhaps more relevant than which media have already carried the story, copies of your
Eos paper were distributed at a Senate briefing yesterday, and the minority (i.e.,
Democratic Party) staff is inviting Mike to appear at a hearing later in the month. (I
trust Mike got and responded to the message??)
Harvey

I don’t remember anyone helping our reply to Steig et al..  which was a flawed work showing too much Antarctic warming and promoted in many hundreds of newspapers across the globe. Heck, I don’t recall any big media attention at all.

My Opinion

It isn’t often that I have cause to agree with Nick lately but he has put a comment in another thread which I would like to copy here in the middle of climategate just to give some perspective on why I don’t fall in line with the IPCC.

Nick Stokes said

December 6, 2011 at 7:32 am e

Curious,
My general position is, yes, AGW is happening and will change our world a lot. How bad a rise of 3-4C will be I don’t know, but it’s very likely to happen.

You can’t deny Arrhenius and RTE. What that comes down to is that the IPCC judgment, right at the front of the SPM, that AGW has caused a rise of about 2 W/m2 in incoming radiation, is sound. Then you get to the climate sensitivity, which is more controversial. But even 2C per CO2 doubling has a big effect.

The arithmetic that is very basic, often forgotten, is on total C. We’ve burnt overall about 350 gigatons, and about 200 of that is in the atmosphere now. Rough figures – it’s late night here. There’s at least another 3000 Gtons C we could easily dig up and burn. That puts arguments about whether we’ve only had about 0.7C rise so far in perspective. It’s more than the total C in the atmosphere and biosphere (what was there and what we’ve put there, about 1500-2000 Gtons), and doesn’t allow for unconventional carbon. It’s at least two doublings. And the real question is, can we burn it all? And if not, how will we stop ourselves?

I haven’t mentioned the temp record, or paleo. That’s not part of the case. It’s important because if by now we hadn’t seen a temp rise, there would be legitimate questions. But we have. It isn’t the proof of AGW, but it’s consistent with it. Paleo says that it’s beyond the normal expactation, but that’s even less essential to the basic case.

Now I can’t disagree with any of what Nick has written, this is different than fully agreeing but only because I don’t have as much confidence in his warming numbers.   So if Iam one of the bad-guy skeptics, where does that put the argument?

Stop Them

If you can’t stop the science, then you have to look elsewhere.

#1680

 

date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:03:05 -0400
from: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@meteo.psu.edu>
subject: Re: Something not to pass on
to: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>

<x-flowed>
Phil,

I would not respond to this. They will misrepresent and take out of context anything you give them. This is a set up. They will certainly publish this, and will ignore any evidence to the contrary that you provide. They are going after Wei-Chyung because he’s U.S. and there is a higher threshold for establishing libel. Nonetheless, he should consider filing a defamation lawsuit, perhaps you too.

I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and  expose McIntyre, and his thusfar unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests.Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy.

I believe that the only way to stop these people is by exposing them and discrediting them.

Do you mind if I send this on to Gavin Schmidt (w/ a request to respect the confidentiality with which you have provided it) for his additional advice/thoughts? He usually has thoughtful insights wiith respect to such matters,

mike

The Center of CG 2.0

One of the rare privileges of being a ‘technical’ climate blogger is that I am sometimes aware of what is coming.

There are some good people on the inside of the IPCC and we should all be thankful for those who put the mess in context. My suggestion is – read this post carefully.

Inside Job

One thing which is abundantly clear from the emails is the incestuousness of the climate consensus.   Of course they fail to see the problem but that is what happens when you are blinded by the goal.  Below is a particularly honest statement by Hulme on Pachuri’s election to head the IPCC.  He is fully aware that the IPCC is not really about the science.  DEFRA’s (UK version of the EPA) support of Martin Parry is particularly interesting as you can find internet references of him sitting in front of DEFRA later on to make reports back.  So they put him in place and receive reports back on issues which are more about energy and money than science.

I suppose people will tell us that there is nothing wrong there.

#0660

cc: s.raper
date: Mon Apr 22 18:14:44 2002
from: Mike Hulme <m.hulme@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: [Fwd: SSI Alert: IPCC Chair Vote]
to: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>

Phil,
I can’t quite see what all the fuss is about Watson – why should he be re-nominated anyway?  Why should not an Indian scientist chair IPCC?  One could argue the CC issue is more important for the South than for the North.  Watson has perhaps thrown his weight about too much in the past.  The science is well covered by Susan Solomon in WGI, so why not get an engineer/economist since many of the issues now raised by CC are more to do with energy and money, than natural science.
If the issue is that Exxon have lobbied and pressured Bush, then OK, this is regrettable but to be honest is anyone really surprised?  All these decisions about IPCC chairs and co-chairs are deeply political (witness DEFRA’s support of Martin Parry for getting the WGII nomination).
Mike

Open Review of the ZOD IPCC Paleoclimate Chapter

What you all have been waiting for.  The IPCC Paleoclimate Zero Order Draft for on line public review.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IJ40UFBT

The excitement never ends.

Enjoy.

—-

The paper slid under the door crack.  How these things happen, I don’t know — but they do.

Droppin’ in

I do love a good entrance…

Yup, like always it is from WUWT, but even when repeated, it is still good to see Climategate 2.0″ on the other side of the blue marble.  Think of the carbon footprint!

The emails are far worse than the last time.  Many will see that as some kind of salesmanship, but it really is far worse.

 

 

 

History

The following paragraph is from the zero order draft of the IPCC on the controversial topic of polar amplification.   The topic is only controversial because one of the two poles is doing a poor job of cooperating with climate models.  Of course some of the pro’s will tell you different, but my understanding is that there is less warming in the Antarctic than was predicted in most models.  Like hide the decline in paleoclimatology, there are random theories for the anti-establishment behavior of the Antarctic thermometers (i.e. ozone), however my understanding is that the guesses are unsubstantiated outside of some models which have the ‘guess’ programmed right into them.  Please understand that I haven’t spent much time with the models (more than most) but as always, you should confirm my opinions yourself.

Kenneth noticed this next paragraph (from the AR5 ZOD on another thread which I’m not quoting or citing it but it happens to randomly appear below) that discusses ‘polar amplification’ – a phenomenon describing more warming over the poles than the rest of the planet.

Box 5.1: Polar Amplification
Instrumental temperature records show that the Arctic (Bekryaev et al., 2010) and the Antarctic Peninsula [(Turner et al., 2005; Turner et al., 2009)] are experiencing the strongest warming trends (0.5°C per decade over the past 50 years), almost twice larger than for the hemispheric or global mean temperature [(IPCC, 2007)]. West Antarctic temperature also displays a warming trend of about 0.1°C per decade over the same time period (Steig et al., 2009; [Reference needed: O'Donnell et al., ?]). A number of mechanisms can produce larger magnitudes of polar temperature changes compared to mid or low latitudes. These mechanisms involve the dynamics and variability of atmosphere (Alexeev et al., 2005; Serreze and Francis, 2006) and the ocean-sea ice system (Chylek et al., 2009; Polyakov et al., 2010; Semenov et al., 2010; Spielhagen et al., 2011b), as well as local radiative feedbacks linked with snow (Ghatak et al., 2010), ice albedo, water vapour, clouds (Graversen and Wang, 2009; Screen and Simmonds, 2010), and land surface vegetation changes (Bhatt et al., 2010). Each of these mechanisms has specific fingerprints in the seasonality, latitudinal and vertical structure of temperature changes. Detection/attribution studies conducted for the Arctic and Antarctic (Gillett et al., 2008) concluded that human influence dominated the recent polar warming.

The first claim of 0.5C/Decade in the peninsula region is easily confirmed as reasonable (slightly high) with this area plot derived from the raw temperature station data below.   The 50 year Antarctic continental trend from the station data is a statistically insignificant 0.05C/decade of warming.

Antarctic temps by ground thermometer. AWS and Manned

Cracking at the Seams

At WUWT:

freeinfo says:

December 10, 2011 at 12:49 pm

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TF234DCZ

Chapter 4 ZOD – Assessment report 5

The Message

The Air Vent hasn’t been as much fun lately. Sure there have been leaks but there has been little discussion of interest outside of the insane climategate garbage. Who wants to listen to a bunch of leftists complain in their emails about governments not repressing industry enough anyway? There is plenty of interesting stuff in science to discuss and since I can’t seem to quit blogging, I intend to re-direct myself to examining data. The pro’s seem to have no propensity for it, so we might as well. Unfortunately, the emails deserve more exposure and there is plenty to write about there but I am an engineer, not a historian. We know the story, a bunch of activists with degrees have taken over climate science – big shock. If any readers want to write on it, send an email. I’m working on a few big posts in the background but they will take time.

So Judith Curry (a very popular blogger) has a post on the communication of science. Willis Eschenbach made the point that communication isn’t the problem, we get it. From my perspective, his point was very welcome:

Public opinion is not “at odds with established scientific evidence”. It is at odds with the IPCC version, the Gavin-sanctioned version of model data that the IPCC and the modelers mistake for evidence.

There is no science communication problem at all in the US. The majority of the public sees the stage productions of the climate alarmists for what they are—pseudo-science and doomsday fantasies.

Like I said, the public sees it very well. They’ve gotten the message that a host of the most important leading lights among the AGW supporters are liars and cheats … so I’d say the communication is getting across very well.

I find this continued insistence that what we have is a problem with bad communication to be hilarious.

It is so blindingly obvious yet earlier today, I listened to Chicago radio and they had a college girl on who was a delegate from here university to Durban. She was blathering on about wanting a livable planet for her kids and how disappointed that she was that the US hadn’t committed enough industrial suicide to make her happy. I’m certain that she hadn’t paid for her plane ticket and passport with her waitressing receipts.

How many ways have we been told by “scienticians” that we’re doomed? If the endless re-wording hasn’t worked, why won’t they consider the content?

Answer: Because the sandwich board – end of the worlder’s -

 

are far smarter than us..

IPCC Chapter 10 ZOD Leaked

Chapter 10 ZOD released!

The advocacy in this one is a bit much….

 

 

Business as Usual

Despite its now obvious flaws, Steig et al. (S09) appears destined for a prominent role in the upcoming AR5 report.   We are told a lot of things by climate scientists, one being publish your results because blogs are not peer reviewed.   It turns out that even when you publish your results, they go unnoticed. S09 is cited in at least 3 different chapters of AR5 initial drafts.  The O’Donnell refutation (O10) of S09 was orders of magnitude more thorough than S09 and various stages of it were reviewed in blogland. Therefore our work had accurate results. Apparently, accuracy counts for little in climate science™ as S09 is a mess and nobody seems to care. Instead of recognizing these widely discussed issues, IPCC authors have taken little notice of our unexciting blue/red plots (that match ALL previous work) and have gone instead to the pretty red colors of S09.

Apparently, the way to get noticed in climate science is to publish unreasonable hockey stick style warming trends written in such a confusing manner that even other scientists can’t work out how you succeeded in communicating the AGW message. If others notice some problems, you refuse to release your messy code and tease their skepticism. If they write in blogs, well that’s not credible because it hasn’t gone through peer review. If they fight back in print, count on your friends to allow you to review the critique. You can recommend to the journal editor that the work be changed to agree with yours and if they won’t, you can recommend it not see the light of day. If the skeptics of your work still manage to publish, you can count on the media to ignore it. Your friends in charge of the institutions will then pretend not to notice the problems and accept your original pretty warming plots with an uncritical eye.

Chapter 10 has some quotes which are relevant:

Michael Mann Activist

I find him a far more effective communicator in person than in papers ‘ntttt’.   This is the same man who throws away data  that doesn’t agree with his conclusions ‘nttt’.  If the data won’t cooperate with climate policy, it is both scientific and fair to simply delete it ‘nttt’.

Mike only wants one thing.  Why won’t you ignorant masses just stop driving and heating!!!

Crackdown – Shooting in the Dark

It seems that the world governments are escalating cliamtegate to the next level.   Tallbloke a fellow recipient blog of the climategate emails, and linked on the right, was raided today in what seems to be a coordinated effort by Metropolitan Police, the Norfolk Constabulary and the Computer Crime division and the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division.  His home was raided and computers were taken for ‘examination’.

Updates are coming shortly which will explain further.  The same is coming to a blogger near you.

Perhaps this post should be titled  -  “The Empire Strikes Back”

UPDATE : Steve McIntyre’s initial reaction.

Classical Values Reaction

An interesting post at WUWT on the matter.

Reaction from the blackboard.

Jonova reaction – I also finally linked the blog on the right.   Don’t know why I’m so lazy about these things.

 

UPDATE: Tallbloke and I both received the following notification from the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division and forwarded by Ryan at WordPress.  ClimateAudit is also mentioned yet I’m not certain that Steve Received notice.  It seems that the larger paid blogs may not have received any notice.  On pdf -WordPress Preservation Request-1

U.S. Department of Justice
Criminal Division
1301 New York Avenue, NW, 6th floor
Washington, DC 20005
PHONE: 202-353-2854
FAX: 202-514-6113
December 9, 2011
VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL

Automattic Inc.
60 29th Street #343
San Francisco, CA 94110
Attn: law-enforcement@wordpress.com
Re: Request for Preservation of Records
Dear Automattic Inc.:
Pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 2703(f), this letter is a formal request for the preservation of all stored communications, records, and other evidence in your possession
regarding the following domain name(s) pending further legal process: http://tallbloke.wordpress.com, http://noconsensus.wordpress.com, and http://climateaudit.org (“the Accounts”) from 00:01 GMT Monday 21 November 2011 to 23:59 GMT Wednesday 23 November 2011.

I request that you not disclose the existence of this request to the subscriber or any other person, other than as necessary to comply with this request. If compliance with this request might result in a permanent or temporary termination of service to the Accounts, or otherwise alert any user of the Accounts as to your actions to preserve the information described below, please contact me as soon as possible and before taking action.

READ THE LINK ABOVE FOR THE REST

WG1 More Chapters Linked

Is this a good time?

Additional chapters released from WG1 of the IPCC.  All links are dead.

Climategate Continued

Fox news has an article on one aspect of climategate featuring some famous bloggers.

UPDATE:  The search warrant issued for confiscation of Tallbloke’s computer’s is available at CA.

Crackdown – U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) – It’s time to bring them to justice!

I’ve been contacted by several reporters over the last few days asking what was going on with the seizure of Tallbloke’s computers.  I have responded to each by email pointing out some of what seem to be obvious facts in the DOJ case and then adding that they (the reporters) are looking into the wrong crime.  I tried to keep the tone nice but wasn’t always sucessful.  Several reporters asked me about why I thought it wasn’t a crime to release the emails, to which I replied, we didn’t do it.   We simply run climate blogs.  It may seem like an excuse to some of the less informed, but there is actually no mechanism for us to prevent the release of these emails.   Since we cannot prevent it, how is it that we are suspects in the act itself?   Yes, I know they told Tallbloke that he wasn’t a suspect, but does anyone really believe that?   Police say crap like that all the time.  It keeps the suspect calm while they investigate him.

Of course the police know that it is intimidating to enter a persons home and take all of their personal information but let’s think about this for a moment.  Michael Mann who is largely government paid, has been caught colluding with Phil Jones and others to hide data from the IPCC in order to make a stronger than actual case for unprecedented 20th century warming.  And by caught, I mean really really caught. Instead of actually looking into his other emials, on his government funded computer, they hold multiple completely fake investigations and clear the whole CRUe.  They didn’t go into Mike or Phil’s houses and check their personal computers to find context, instead they go to an anonymous bloggers house and take his machines telling him falsely that he is not a suspect.

What information could they possibly get from an innocent blogger who simply writes skeptically about bad science in climate that they couldn’t get from WordPress – the blog host?   There is only one thing I can think of, personal communications with the perpetrator.  Tallbloke is either a suspect in collusion with foia.org OR they want him to stop blogging.   Of course so are the rest of us on that list in the letter from the US DOJ, and I’m sure a few others are suspects who aren’t on the list.

“No Jeff, you guys are evil deniers.”, the advocates write.  “You are complicit in the release of the emials. “

To which I reply — Ok geniuses, tell me how to stop it!

A full twenty five people had downloaded them before I noticed the link and over 160 had downloaded by my first post which was the first on the internet tilted Climategate 2.0.  Note the clever title I gave it.  I’m sure that the name was illegal somehow.   What should I have done instead?  Phone the internet and tell it to stop!

My guess is that the police are likely not happy about having to investigate fake crimes.  They know these simple facts about internet information very well and unlike the biased media, they can read hide the decline and understand the context quite well.   See, the police ain’t stupid.  They are used to being lied to and when the climate boys tell them – out of context – it requires a personal interpretation by the investigator to determine whether the suspect is telling the truth.   Yes, everyone is a suspect to them.  Of course they do have to follow orders from the boss.  Have you ever wondered why the Climategate 1 release required the highest and most political levels of the UK police to investigate?

Anyway, I sort of gave an earful to the various reporters that contacted me.  I even quoted one guys stuff back to him asking how the emails could be out of context 8 hours after their release when nobody could have possibly read them in that time – let alone attempt to put them all ‘out of context’.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Sara Reardon was hardly alone when she wrote - “There’s nothing really new in a second massive cache of e-mails”, on the same day that the huge pile was released.  A “massive” cache with nothing new?….hmm.   Just how it is that she knew that is beyond me. But a lot of reporters seemed to teleconnect the same point made first by surReal Climate.  I have still read only a fraction (being tired of it) and today we have a unique new bit for the public.   Remember those august committees formed by the government to see if the  government might have screwed up?   Ya know, the ones who decided that the government funded people were innocent of wrongdoing?

One determination by the committees was that nobody had deleted any emails to cover anything up.  Well it looks like they may have accidentally gotten the answer right.  Instead of deletion, they were copied (cut and paste) to a personal portable USB drive. David Holland has an excellent guest post on the matter at Bishop Hill blog.

Climate audit has added some detail.

We have emails from all in Ch 6 to say the group doesn’t want emails made available.

I’ve read the USB quote by David Holland in the emails.  I’ve been slowly compiling them – very slowly.  It is fantastically boring reading the work of people who are poorly qualified. In the end, I have to agree with Sara on this one.  We already knew they did it, even though the skeptic-deaf adjudicators claimed they didn’t.

John Christy and Roy Spencer on UAH

I have written often that the UAH dataset is the most accurate data available on the market.  Unfortunately its trend runs lower than other datasets excepting RSS in recent years.  This does not indicate that there are no problems with it but I do make that statement after a considerable amount of time examining the papers and documentation behind the data.  Unfortunately, the low trend makes it a  denier dataset in the eyes of the IPCC, a fact evident both in the AR documents as well as the disparaging comments in the climategate emails.  Please note, UAH has a statistically significant positive trend which is in agreement with AGW (or natural warming), just not with extreme AGW as presented by the models.

Anyway, Roy Spencer and Anthony Watts are carrying a post which replies to some of the often uninformed advocate critique of their data as well as where it differs from the AGW extremist message.   It is very much worth a read.   –JEFF

—————————–

Addressing Criticisms of the UAH Temperature Dataset at 1/3 Century

December 21st, 2011

The UAH satellite-based global temperature dataset has reached 1/3 of a century in length, a milestone we marked with a press release in the last week (e.g. covered here).

As a result of that press release, a Capital Weather Gang blog post by Andrew Freedman was dutifully dispatched as damage control, since we had inconveniently noted the continuing disagreement between climate models used to predict global warming and the satellite observations.

What follows is a response by John Christy, who has been producing these datasets with me for the last 20 years:

Many of you are aware that as a matter of preference I do not use the blogosphere to report information about climate or to correct the considerable amount of misinformation that appears out there related to our work. My general rule is never to get in a fight with someone who owns an obnoxious website, because you are simply a tool of the gatekeeper at that point.

However, I thought I would do so here because a number of folks have requested an explanation about a blog post connected to the Washington Post that appeared on 20 Dec. Unfortunately, some of the issues are complicated, so the comments here will probably not satisfy those who want the details and I don’t have time to address all of its errors.

Click here for the rest.

Their Side – Bloggers knew FOIA emails were coming

I just had a phone conversation with Leslie Kaufman of the NYT on the ‘hacker’. She was careful to call the FOIA people by that PC name. Rule 1 – Don’t offend the witness unless you want them upset. I didn’t really want to do the interview because these things don’t usually go well for me and it took me several days to make time. Unfortunately my Achilles heel is that I tend to say what I think. — I know you are all surprised.

She asked several questions about the hacker and said that her job was to investigate that aspect and not the climategate emails – which she believed had been covered. Of course I took a little time to explain the science of the issue and even brought up the conversations between the Dept of Energy and Phil Jones. In general, she seemed to repeat the opinions of the climategate committees despite the blindingly obvious problems in meshing any of their conclusions with reality. She said it was well covered that the researchers hadn’t been ‘open enough’. If that is the limit of the curiosity of your audience, it didn’t seem worth getting into.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Photobucket

It looks so perfect from a warm couch!

Happy Capitalist Extravagance Day!