Extreme Ski Trip

It’s hard to know what to write about, there is simply too much here.  So let’s do a fun one… Where would you hold a global warming conference dedicated to ‘extremes’ — Switzerland?

Can anyone say  — Ski trip!!

Art Furrer Resort Hotel, Riederalp, Switzerland
January 28-31, 2009
Please scroll down for all information

Refusing Data

A nice post by Lucia on why the data matters and why the ridiculous RC response page is a good start yet completely inadequate to fix the problems.

Does refusing 2% of data matter?

 

NewZealand Confirmation

A post from an anonymous blogger who requested a repost here. Since he did a decent job of demonstrating his methods (far better than CRU) it’s worth taking a look even if his name turned out to be Dr. Evil. From the savecapitalism blog, the recent discovery by the drive by media that New Zealand’s temperature data also contains substantial corrections is confirmed.

—————-

Guest post – HPX83 from the SaveCapitalism blog.

Okay, so I couldn’t help but do it. I had to try and reproduce the New Zealand “glitch”. And I did. When reading this, please remember that it is NOT scientific evidence, it is a first draft for reproducing the results found by others. I have not interpolated to get missing data, and some calculations may have some lack of precision, so do not rely on this data as “evidence” – simply as a reason to look further into the matter yourself. I am not a climatologist.

Global Temperature Records – Above the Law

As a young man doing research, the first thing we learned was to record our raw data in detail. Results must be reproducible from scratch or you are not doing science. Requests by people to see this data are always granted to a reasonable degree because reproducibility is key. The reason that people are so interested in global temperatures is that the large positive adjustments to the records provide most of the signal in the GISS global temperature record. In the case of the case of the more popular, higher slope CRU record, we don’t know what ‘adjustments’ were made to these records.

For years people have been asking CRU to explain their global temperature record with no success. All requests for data and methods by reasoned experts were stonewalled. It got so bad that people started issuing freedom of information act requests for the data. To counter that Phil Jones colluded with government officials to ignore the law. This thread is about temperature record reproduction rather than FOIA so I bolded the important bit and decided to leave the emails up so you can see the DOT GOV’S of the people who were notified of this apparently illegal activity.

Mann – Fire for Effect

Considering the 2006 review, I have almost no hope that this will reach the correct conclusion. In the meantime, Michael Mann’s employers are at least pretending to ask the right questions. In my opinion it shuld be the shrotest review in history and it would go like this

Boss: “You ‘screened’ for data you liked? You’re kidding.”

Mann: “Apparently you’re unfamiliar with widely accepted screening procedures. You have no credibility. Um… sir…”

Boss: “I see.  The interview is concluded. Wait outside, our decision will be rendered in 30 seconds..”

I found this at WUWT.

Context

John Pittman asked to post this here. It’s probably the longest blog post I’ve ever read but it provides some context for Yamal and the original hockey stick with emails in the appropriate timeframe. It has a couple of amazing quotes and it should provide the more studious reader with some good information.

Guest post – John Pittman

Historical Perspective of Why Yamal Matters

“I can say conclusively that the hacked emails are just blips of information that will have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the push to get policymakers to back the science,” said Anne Kelly, the policy director at Ceres, a sustainable business network whose members include PepsiCo, American Airlines and Bloomberg. Already the damage control is starting. The Monbiot is a classic. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/11/23/the-knights-carbonic/ “”But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory?(8,9) Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury manmade climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed””.

Mann09 Analog vs Digital

In Mann08 a correlation screening process was used to eliminate offending series for a composite plus scale reconstruction. It provided an easy method for the scientists to choose which data makes the best hockey stick. It was very simple to demonstrate the completely bogus and biased selective choice of information which was in my opinion done with the intent of creating a false signal. This blog has been quite vocal about the intent issue win Mann08 and now we are faced with the same kind of result in Mann09. Yet they didn’t use screening this time.

???

Ben Santer had this unusual reply WRT a paper submitted by MM which used the same math that Ben Santer used to prove models were so good except they extended the climate model trend and temperature data after 2000. I haven’t read their paper cause it ain’t published yet but the Santer use of data pre-2000 only data was is pretty convenient to say the least. Consider that ‘skeptics’ or realists as we prefer suspect that models don’t relate the recent 10 years of no warming very well. As pointed out in other emails.

Ben makes the ridiculous claim that somehow McIntyre doesn’t realize that longer trends with the same noise have tighter confidence intervals but besides that truly goofy claim, he says it’s of no practical significance to look at model data for over what amounts to about 20 years. It seems a bit arbitrary don’t you think?

Scientists Begin To Tell the Story

First, VonStorch then Zorita and now from a comment at an article here Skewed science. Advocate scientists from Real Climate are alleged to have threatened this mans job if he published a study inconsistent with the consensus. Read the third reply too. Apparently EH Moran just now felt comfortable telling his story.

Noconsensus – I picked the right URL.

Thanks to reader Eric from calling this to our attention.

Zorita Calls For Banning Mann, Jones and Rahmstorf from IPCC

I thought about not posting this but there is some interesting points in it. There are very strong statements regarding the climate of climate science including blackmail, collusion and corruption. In his post, Zorita makes an open effort to separate certain scientists from the chaff and get rid of them while propping up others. This seems like a political move to me with all the nonsensical trappings that go along with politics. Still he openly admits to the broken nature of the scientific process and is one of the first scientists so far to do so.

For a short background from my perspective, Dr Zorita, co-authored a paper in 2004 which pointed out the loss in variance created by methods used in Michael Mann’s hockey stick as demonstrated in the hockey stick posts linked above. The VonStorch and Zorita paper had a mistake in replicating Mann’s results in that they did the math correctly whereas Mann had it wrong so they were in the odd situation of correcting a correct paper to make it match an incorrect paper. All that aside, they demonstrate that Mann’s hockey stick handles are mathematically inclined to be straight.

Today, Zorita has issued a statement regarding a few of the scientists involved. In the middle of it he oddly gives thanks to those who are directly responsible for the “hiding the decline data” so that is difficult to grasp. Since Keith Briffa’s hidden decline was not properly disclosed in the IPCC chapter, and efforts to show the decline by some were blocked by IPCC scientists, I cannot agree with his exculpatory statements about Briffa and Osborn. Perhaps it’s an effort to separate the worst and chuck them while saving the very poor quality and highly biased paleo chapter of the IPCC reports which he also off handedly compliments. I suppose it is his field though.

Here’s where Steve McIntyre tried to get the data shown and was rejected by IPCC authors in the same chapter Zorita speaks well of.

Click to Expand

Junk is junk in my opinion, but then again I’m no polypaleoscienticianator ist.

Thanks to reader Alberto for providing the heads up. Alberto also points out that Zorita has done a post on Climate Audit in 2006. If you’re interested, you can get a perspective on his take of proxy papers.

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Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process
Eduardo Zorita, November 2009

Sesame Street Science

In a never ending effort to help the media think, we must point out the detail of everything. Aren’t writers supposed to be the wordsmiths and reporters supposed to be detectives? If nothing else is hidden in plain sight, Steve McIntyre’s posts are. A reader asked if DOCTOR KIETH BRIFFA had a reasonable explanation for the DECLINE in temperatures in recent years as predicted by his scientifically perfect proxy’s. Well we do nothing at tAV if it’s not full service. I’m talking all the bells and whistles too.

Here is a link to a post Steve McIntyre did ….. way back in 2006.

Post number 529 at CA, that’s an old one.

In it DOCTOR Briffa ratinoalizes why these tree rings are still temperature despite ‘divergence’ problems.

It is salient to note that relative tree-ring width, and basal area increment, also show a relative decline and divergence from the temperature curve(s), arguing against the decline in density being a compensation reaction to increasing ring growth (as is seen in forestry soil fertilizing experiments). I would imagine that higher temperatures, and possibly some increasing sensitivity to lower summer soil moisture are involved, but some additional growth-limiting factor must also be implicated. Higher CO2 would be expected to increase basal area growth, so I consider it unlikely that this is the factor.

I’m starting to understand Briffa’s writing style. It seems to be -make absolute paper killing statements, an arm wave and ignore the previous. He’s got no clue what the tree ring data means!! None at all!!

Steve McIntyre on Climategate

Steve has a nice post for the world.

New!! Data from the Decline

2009 November 26

by stevemcintyre

For the very first time, the Climategate Letters “archived” the deleted portion of the Briffa MXD reconstruction of “Hide the Decline” fame – see here.

Gavin Schmidt claimed that the decline had been “hidden in plain sight” (see here. ). This isn’t true. The post-1960 data was deleted from the archived version of this reconstruction at NOAA here and not shown in the corresponding figure in Briffa et al 2001, though pre-calibration values were archived in a different NCDC file here. While the decline was shown in Briffa et al 1998 and Briffa 2000, it was not shown in the IPCC 2001 graph, one that Mann, Jones, Briffa, Folland and Karl were working in the two weeks prior to the “trick” email (or for that matter in the IPCC 2007 graph, an issue that I’ll return to.) For now, here is a graphic showing the deleted data in red. A retrieval script follows.

Figure 1. Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions.

Context of Corruption

An awesome post on WUWT. If you want to understand the ‘consensus’ you should read this. When the emails are in context the story get’s even worse. There are a lot of newcomers here but many of these emails have a background that doesn’t make the story any prettier.

THIS IS NOT A SMALL DEAL!!

Here are some excerpts:

From Roger pielke Sr.

E-mail Documentation Of The Successful Attempt By Thomas Karl Director Of the U.S. National Climate Data Center To Suppress Biases and Uncertainties In the Assessment Surface Temperature Trends

The release of the e-mails from Phil Jones further confirmed the attempts to suppress viewpoints of climate change issues, which conflict with the IPCC viewpoint.

And this:

Adjust the ‘Blip’?

This email has been posted at least partially in several places.  I think it deserves some discussion and explanation.  The scientists appear to be discussing reducing sea surface temperatures in 1940 to make the global warming story consistent.  Of course it increases warming by some amount as well.  I’m not totally familiar with this section of data, perhaps others are but when we ‘adjust’ globally utilized data to fit conclusions, we’re doing a bit of a disservice to science.  I wonder why they  felt the need to change the data here.

From: Tom Wigley
To: Phil Jones
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Sante

<x-flowed>
Phil,

Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly
explain the 1940s warming blip.

Odd email.

Urban warming isn’t important or real?  They spend all their time in these emails addressing ‘skeptics’ rather than asking if the data might have a problem.

From: Tom Wigley
To: Phil Jones
Subject: LAND vs OCEAN
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:36:15 -0700

<x-flowed>
We probably need to say more about this. Land warming since
1980 has been twice the ocean warming — and skeptics might
claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important.

See attached note.

Comments?

Tom

</x-flowed>

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