There is no doubt in my mind that the temperature data used for global warming climate models has been manipulated to an extent that is almost impossible to determine.
Whether it is made-up data to fill-in obvious gaps in the coverage, adjustments to data that seems inconsistent with the data being reported by nearby stations, data from inappropriately-sited instruments or a host of other manipulations – the fact remains, the data was manipulated by scientists.
Therefore, before embarking on radical public policy changes which would see larger government bureaucracies, higher taxes, higher energy costs and a reduction in both our and individual freedoms of choice, we need to know to what extent the data has been manipulated, are these manipulations statistically sound and do these limited number of observations really allow conclusions to be drawn about a globally-wide phenomenon?
So, what do those who have a vested interest in their research fear from a new look at the raw data?
We have learned from the “climategate” e-mails that some of the most prominent, well-credentialed and previous well-respected climate scientists were caught in an attempt to manage the peer-review process and employ statistical “tricks” in essentially “cooking” the global climate books.
So let us see what this latest form of manipulation of the news might take …
The Los Angeles Times is reporting …
“Berkeley scientists' climate data review puts them at center of national debate”
“The head of the study, a longtime critic of the global warming consensus, will testify before a House panel. Leading climate scientists worry that the project, funded in part by an oil billionaire's foundation, has an agenda.”
Nice …
First of all, every time I see the word Berkeley, I am reminded that the University of California at Berkeley is the West Coast home of modern progressive thought. Immediately suspect.
Second, longtime critic is almost an implied pejorative. Third, “global warming consensus” assumes facts not in evidence and science does not rely on a “consensus.” Funded in part by an oil billionaires foundation assumes that somehow energy research by the energy industry should be equated with corrupted science. To which I would simply point out the massive funding by the government and other progressive foundations which has a bigger bias, more corruption and a more dangerous agenda. And they are worried that this researcher, project and findings are agenda driven. Who are these scientists who could easily refute the findings if they can be proven to be incorrect? And why are they so worried? Because the findings might differ or disagree with their findings – or, in the worst case, highlight them as fraudulent?
Continuing …
“An effort by a handful of UC Berkeley scientists to reexamine temperature data underlying global warming research has landed in the center of a national political debate over government regulation.”
What? Science is a skeptical process. Where each researcher seeks to validate, extend or disprove the work of his fellow researchers. This is how science should be done by honest and ethical researchers. Why it is important to mention the national political debate over government regulation is curious because the scientists should be more concerned with the science and less concerned with an agenda-driven debate over public policy.
“The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study is led by physicist Richard Muller, a longtime critic of the scientific consensus on climate change, who plans to testify on the effort Thursday before the House Science Committee in the latest of several congressional inquiries on climate science since the GOP majority was seated.”
Like the democrat majority was a trustworthy group who could be trusted to make rational public policy. Might I just mention that it was the democrats who gave us Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which were highly manipulated to support democrat politics and public policy. So much for trusting either group of politicians.
Guilt by association …
“The Berkeley project's biggest private backer, with $150,000, is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are the nation's most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on fossil-fuel burning, the biggest contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gases.”
One, it can be assumed from the nature of projects funded at Berkeley that institutional funding for such a project would be almost impossible to obtain and that $150,000 is a pittance when considered against the millions the government is spending to push their public policy agenda on the backs of ill-conceived science.
“Temperature data from tens of thousands of weather stations across the globe, many of which have incomplete records, are "’very contentious,’ Muller said in an interview. ‘The skeptics are raising legitimate concerns.’”
True enough.
“Leading climate scientists, however, say the three most in-depth temperature studies agree on the overall severity and pace of global warming.”
All three studies are associated with climate scientists who apparently have assumed the roles of activists and some of whom are personally suspected of compromising the science, the methodology, the data and the findings.
The truth emerges …
“They worry that the Berkeley effort, and the hearing Thursday, will add to public confusion on a topic that is as politically polarized as it is scientifically complex.”
How do these scientists know, in advance, what the findings might show? Unless they have manipulated the data in detectable ways that will not stand up to scrutiny? As to public confusion, if the pro-global warming scientists cannot make a clear, compelling and supportable case, shouldn’t that be a “red flag” that corrupt and self-serving politicians are also up to no good?
“Muller said Koch and other contributors will have no influence over the results. ‘We have no prejudice, no preconception of what we are going to get,’ he said, adding that the Koch donation was less than the $188,587 contributed by the federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where Muller is a senior scientist.”
What: a preconceived notion?
"’Global warming is a serious problem,’ Muller said in a lecture at UC Berkeley last week. ‘But people simply don't believe the story anymore because the story was exaggerated.... Not a single polar bear has died because of receding ice.’"
Does this mean this Berkeley researcher really has an open mind and is able to also consider the notion that the climate is cyclical and we may be regressing to a cooler mean global temperature?
“The Berkeley study comes as efforts to curb planet-heating emissions from industrial plants and motor vehicles are under attack in Congress. The Supreme Court in 2007 said the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, but Republicans and coal-state Democrats, citing uncertainty over the science, are sponsoring legislation to thwart that effort.”
Conflating the research with public policy.
“Temperature data were the focus of the so-called 2009 Climategate controversy, in which opponents of greenhouse gas regulation alleged that leaked emails from a British climate laboratory showed manipulation of weather station records. Five U.S. and British government and university investigations have refuted the charges.”
The investigators investigated themselves are were concentrating on methodology and other process-driven events. They did not look at the science, the data, the problems with the peer-review studies – and not surprising, most of these investigations mentioned that the statute of limitations for official investigations and prosecutions had passed.
“The Berkeley effort is hardly new. Over the last two decades, three independent scientific groups have analyzed international data from thousands of weather stations. Using different combinations of stations and varying statistical methods, all have come to nearly identical conclusions: The planet's surface, on average, has warmed about 0.75 degrees centigrade (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since the beginning of the 20th century.”
Assuming the data is correct – are we going to destroy our economy for a one-degree rise in temperature over decades. Especially when rising temperatures and rising carbon dioxide levels may be beneficial to man?
Killing the messenger before the message is sent …
“Scientists involved in those studies said they would welcome new peer-reviewed research, but they contend that Muller is violating scientific protocol by publicizing his project, underway for months, before it produces any vetted scientific papers.”
Two big lies in a row. One, from the climategate e-mails we can see the degree to which the leadership of the global warming movement subverted the peer-review process to kill or weaken unfavorable research papers. And two, there is no scientific protocol for publicizing a project. It is done at the beginning of all projects, so this assertion is pure Saul Alinsky – a trick to cloud the credibility of the research before the findings are even known.
"’I am highly skeptical of the hype and claims,’ said Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a university consortium. ‘The team has some good people but not the expertise required in certain areas, and purely statistical approaches are naive. I suspect they have an agenda.’"
You mean like your teams without credible statisticians approving manipulations before they were made. Oh, and by the way, didn’t some of the original datasets go missing after the manipulated data was misrepresented as the raw data? Kevin Trenberth was in the middle of the climategate kerfuffle, most notably for questioning the methodology.
From: Kevin Trenberth <[email protected]> To: Michael Mann <[email protected]> Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600 Cc: Stephen H Schneider <[email protected]>, Myles Allen <[email protected]>, peter stott <[email protected]>, "Philip D. Jones" <[email protected]>, Benjamin Santer <[email protected]>, Tom Wigley <[email protected]>, Thomas R Karl <[email protected]>, Gavin Schmidt <[email protected]>, James Hansen <[email protected]>, Michael Oppenheimer <[email protected]> Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC are tracking PDO on a monthly basis but it is highly correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn't decadal. The PDO is already reversing with the switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for first time since Sept 2007. <link removed> Kevin
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Continuing …
“The Koch donation, to many, confirms those suspicions. ‘Why would a scientist accept funding from an organization with no interest in advancing the science?’ asked Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.”
Talk about character assassination. Perhaps if Santer were a more honest observer, he might ask: “Why are scientists lining up at the government trough for multi-million dollar grants when they know that their grant will be pre-judged on supporting the government’s preferred political policy?”
“Muller said his team would submit to peer-reviewed journals data that ‘measure the warming with more precision than in the past.’"
This may be BS – the ultimate precision of the process is predetermined by the ultimate precision and placement of the instrumentation and the statistical methods used to manipulate the data. To think that any credible scientist can estimate the global temperature to two-places of significance under these circumstances is ludicrous, to say the least. And how does this “impartial” scientist know that it will measure warming? What years will he include in the study – although we can see that the Earth has been warmer, colder, with more CO2 and less CO2 – all before the industrial revolution? Will he cherry pick the data?
A Berkeley-style head-fake?
“He acknowledged that his study could find that issues raised by skeptics have only a "marginal effect" on temperature estimates. "Don't expect any huge surprises," he warned. "The surprises may be in the fine tuning.’"
Is it possible that this is a head fake and this is a faux-attack to lend legitimacy to any findings which seem to corroborate the consensus? Considering the time, effort and money which has been expended on spinning these stories, one can only wonder.
“Muller and many of those who question the temperature data are drawn to the ‘urban heat island’ phenomenon, maintaining that gauges may be registering latent heat from asphalt, concrete and other urban features. Over time, some weather stations that once recorded temperatures in rural areas have been surrounded by cities and suburbs.”
This is a legitimate question. There is no doubt that there is an “urban heat island” phenomenon. But part of the data manipulation was to “adjust for the effect.”
“The Berkeley project is analyzing information from 39,000 stations —five times as many as the other groups, Muller said — and will address the fact that temperature data have been recorded at varying times of day.”
You mean some politicians were prepared to accept the data from approximately 7,800 weather stations across this vast globe to determine public policy which could kill our economy and slide us deeply into socialism? How many stations are there? Where are they situated? Where is their raw data archived? How many have gone inactive or have been moved? How many have older, less accurate instrumentation? Did some of the records go missing on inclement days?
“The project also will put its calculations on the Internet in a ‘transparent’ way, Muller said. Other scientists, he said, ‘put homogenized data online. They don't put up the [software] tools that get you from the raw data to the homogenized data. How do they pick the [weather station] sites? That involves human judgment.’"
This is not as impressive as it sounds. The government dumps tons of data, much of it worthless, on the Internet each and every day; knowing that citizens do not have sophisticated data mining tools to analyze the data on their own. Given the Obama Administration’s definition of transparent, I am already skeptical.
The devil’s disciple?
“'Peter Thorne, a leading expert on temperature data at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., said the three main data sets by the NOAA, NASA and Britain's Hadley Centre adjust for the heat island effect, as well as for measurements at different times of day. Muller's use of 39,000 weather stations, he said, ‘will make next to no difference’ in the final result.”
Perhaps Thorne used a crystal ball to be able to make that statement or perhaps Thorne knows that this might be a head fake? Who knows?
“Thorne said the data and computer code for the NASA analysis have been publicly online for five years, while NOAA's data and code have been online for three years. Most of the British center's data are online, except for information shared on a confidential basis by commercial groups, and the code is available, he said.”
You mean like the scientists who claimed proprietary interest in the data, code and method and refused for years to turn over their information to legitimate researchers seeking to corroborate their work? Thorne would like to gloss over the fact that many significant emails between scientists have been deleted from systems, datasets have gone missing and that there is no central registry of climate data which can be trusted to this date.
I personally examined much of the code base and the compilation and porting instruction were problematical to say the least.
Discredit the project by innuendo …
“Thorne said he was unsurprised by the Berkeley project's focus on temperature data.’"For those who wish to discredit the science, this record is the holy grail,’ he said. ‘They figure if they can discredit this, then society would have significant doubts about all of climate science.’"
Discuss the hypothesis as if it were incontrovertible fact …
“’But temperature is only one indicator of global warming,’ Thorne said. ‘Even if the thermometer had never been invented, the evidence is there from deep ocean changes, from receding glaciers, from rising sea levels and receding sea ice and spring snow cover. All the physical indicators are consistent with a warming world.’”
And offer your learned assurances that everything is as you say it is …
"’There is no doubt the trend of temperature is upwards since the early 20th century. And that trend is accelerating.’"
If Thorne was this sure and could prove his position with any degree of certainty, he, not the IPCC and Al Gore, would have gotten the Nobel Prize. And if the issue was this simple and easy to prove, we would not be having this debate at this point in time. All of which makes me skeptical of Thorne’s self-serving agenda.
Bottom line …
You certainly cannot trust the corrupt politicians. You can only trust scientists who make their data, programs and methodology public for other scientists to corroborate. And there is no way you can rely on the mainstream media to tell the absolute truth given their dismal performance with the Obama campaign.
Perhaps you need to trust in God and the essential “rightness” of a self-sustaining, self-renewing, self-regenerative nature – and concentrate on improving man’s life in spite of the global climate. Electing “honest brokers” to serve “We the People” and to kill all of the political agenda nonsense which is threatening to turn America into a socialist third-world nation to be plundered at leisure by America’s enemies.
-- steve
Reference Links …
Global warming: Berkeley scientists' climate data review puts them at center of national debate - latimes.com