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From a fellow blogger re the latest on climategate.
CRU Raw Temp Data Shows No Significant Warming Over Most Of The World
Bottom Line – Using two back-of-the-envelope tests for significance against the CRU global temperature data I have discovered:
- 75% of the globe has not seen significant peak warming or cooling changes between the period prior to 1960 and the 2000’s which rise above a 0.5°C threshold, which is well within the CRU’s own stated measurement uncertainties o +/- 1°C or worse.
- Assuming a peak to peak change (pre 1960 vs 2000’s) should represent a change greater than 20% of the measured temperature range (i.e., if the measured temp range is 10° then a peak-to-peak change of greater than 2° would be considered ’significant’) 87% the Earth has not seen experienced significant temperature changes between pre 1960 period and the 2000’s.
So how did I come to this conclusion? If you have the time you can find out by reading below the fold.
I have been working on this post for about a week now, testing a hypothesis I have regarding the raw temp data vs the overly processed CRU, GISS, NCDC, IPCC results (the processed data shows dramatic global warming in the last century). I have been of the opinion the raw temp data tells a different, cooler story than the processed data. My theory is alarmists’ results do not track well with the raw data, and require the merging of unproven and extremely inaccurate proxy data to open the error bars and move the trend lines to produce the desired result. We have a clear isolated example from New Zealand where cherry picked data and time windows have resulted in a ridiculous ‘data merging’ that completely obliterates the raw data. . .
UPDATE I:
I posted this comment to another commenter in an open thread at the S-R’s “A Matter of Opinion” blog:
Jeffrey,
I haven’t really delved into the inner workings of the climate debate. I’m not advocating one position or another. I’m just watching how the new/alternative/social media has facilitated an open debate on this topic that was not possible in the past. The MSM has not facilitated this debate and largely has concluded this is a settled debate e.g., our resident blogmeister Gary Crooks. Many people can now communicate inexpensively and instantaneously with many other people and share their views/opinions in a free and open debate. These debates can easily go viral if they strike a social chord. This is what happened and eventually broke the Catholic Church’s longstanding secrecy of sexual abuse by priests in Boston in 2002. See Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody-the power of organizing without organizations.”
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/20…
Experts in their own fields of research and expertise and not entrenched in the climate debate are now seeing the underlying climate data and the CRU’s source code used to smooth the data and are scratching their heads in disbelief. Read the article at the AT re the mathematics of global warming I linked to above. Our current computer processing ability may not yet have the ability to crunch the vast data in a reliable manner based using current climate models to predict much of anything.
Today’s WSJ OP/ED has an excellent piece on what happens when there is a lack of transparency in these scientific debates when critics are marginalized and shut out of the review process. As I said above, “Garbage in – garbage out. Bad science doesn’t do anyone any good.”
This is a serious flaw in our critical thinking skills at a time when are policy makers are on the verge of making huge changes in the world’s economic system. There is great danger in making these policy shifts when they are based on suspect/flawed information.
Today’s WSJ OP/ED:
The Web Discloses Inconvenient Climate Truths
The world cannot trust scientists who abuse their power.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001…For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails,and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data. . .
This unseemly business reveals another flaw. Why are scholars who review papers allowed to remain anonymous? Reforming scientists and lawmakers might put the question more concretely: How many of the anonymous reviewers who spiked skeptical scientific papers over the years are the people who wrote these emails detailing how they abused peer review to block contrary evidence?
Science was one of the first disciplines to insist on transparency in order to foster competition in data and ideas. In the case of global warming, transparency is better late than never, as policy makers now have the chance to review the facts. Facing up to high-profile flaws is hard for any profession, but honest scientists will cheer how in our digital era eventually the truth will out, and will accept that no scientific hypothesis can be viewed as sacred or can be proved in secret.
The S-R censored my additional comment [see below]. OK my analogy with climategate/RPS et al as being a failure of critical thinking skills has been pulled from the S-R Blog. So much for transparency and faciltating an open/free debate. Yes, this was a little off topic but I believe the analogy was valid. Why was my comment killed? I will let you form your own opinion if it was relevant or not and whether it violated normal blog etiquette.
In my professional opinion this is why:
In a normal political environment an inquisitive free press would serve as a check by educating and informing its readers on this abuse of power and lack of action by their governmental entities. These intertwined stories have great news value – The RPS Bond Fraud, the manslaughter death of Jo Savage, the underlying causes and their subsequent cover-ups. This story would be Page One Above the Fold in the paper of record. The press as a governmental watchdog by its reporting would drive public opinion that in turn would hold those elected/appointed officials accountable for their actions. Unfortunately in Spokane such information is squelched because the perpetrators own the local newspaper of record, The Spokesman-Review. The S-R functions as an instrumentality of this ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy [as defined in RICO] to conceal its criminal acts by its self-censorship and under reporting of stories that involve the business/real estate interests of its owners – the Cowles Co.
I posted this observation in this blog thread on the unraveling of CRU’s AGW model data facilitated by the new/alternative/social media. As I say below I’m not advocating one position or another re global warming but find it very fascinating on how the new/alternative/social media has facilitated a debate on this issue that some did not want to have. Climategate, RPS et al, the Savage manslaughter death are directly related to the failure of critical thinking skills and the understanding of the underlying risks.
As I’ve written in another in piece that I will excerpt here to express my point:
Decision makers . . . have a lot of responsibility and must quickly sort through complex data and information. The RPS Bond Fraud et al and the Savage manslaughter cases are not as complex as they may first appear. These cases are about the failure of critical thinking skills and ignoring of relative risk by our governmental decision makers. Let me remind you of a similar story that will give a familiar frame of reference from which to review the information I’m about to present.
A colleague of mine wrote an essay, “Shuttle Thinking,” that will appear soon as a feature article in an upcoming national business journal. The key point of the article is that even high-level management teams like NASA can succumb to fatally flawed decision-making when it comes to evaluating risk. The Columbia shuttle disaster involved pieces of foam breaking off from the external fuel tank – striking a very critical area of the shuttle’s left wing that eventually caused the catastrophic shuttle failure and the death of seven astronauts upon re-entry. Similar foam failures had occurred on numerous shuttle missions prior to Columbia, to the point that it became an accepted normal event. NASA engineers failed to recognize this structural failure as a risk. Because each prior foam event seemed to be minor, with no consequences, the engineers were emboldened ⎯ to continue to roll the dice. With each subsequent flight, the risk went unappreciated until that rare event occurred when, in the case of the Space Shuttle Columbia; the foam broke off and struck a vital area of the shuttle’s left wing. Keep rolling the dice and it will eventually come up craps. NASA management gambled and lost.
The Savage manslaughter case is an almost identical situation to the Space Shuttle cases. These parking structure barriers were failing with regularity, the RPS Parking Garage owners knew the barriers were failing, and RPS management chose to gamble our community’s safety by doing nothing. Similar to the NASA management — doing nothing worked— but only for a while. Because of the continued negligence of the garage owners, eventually another parking structure barrier failed — only this time, it resulted in the tragic death of Ms. Savage. The owners gambled—only this time, it was Jo Savage and her family that lost.
Here’s the comment that was censored by the S-R Blog:
Ron_the_Cop on November 30 at 10:11 a.m.
Jeffrey,If I might take this failure of critical thinking ability in the climate debate to the the micro economic level. There are many parallels to such flawed policy decision making in Spokane. Spokane has a penchant for making such decisions in secret to the detriment of its citizens. Those who would dare openly criticize the conventional wisdom/thinking are ruthlessly marginalized and dismissed as eccentrics. Dare I say RPS et al and now the MOBIUS Project? Such decision making made without transparency can have fatal consequences e.g., the death of Jo Savage.
It is my professional opinion based on my experience as a thirty-year criminal investigator, Co Prosecutor Steve Tucker threw the Savage manslaughter case just like a prize fighter would throw a title fight. Tucker made sure that no impartial jury would ever see and hear the very damning evidence and testimony to decide the guilt or innocence of the owners. There never was a complete and thorough criminal investigation done that followed the evidence wherever it would lead. Those in our law enforcement community have said Savage’s death was reviewed by three different bodies. True but this review was seriously flawed. As I wrote Tucker and later the AG’s Office, any filing decision without first having a complete and thorough criminal investigation to review would be flawed and disingenuous at best. Tucker in his conclusion that there was “insufficient evidence” to warrant a criminal filing was lying by omission to the citizens of Spokane. Tucker was never challenged by the media on his decision. Why? I will be surprised if my opinion survives the day as Mr. Crooks or Mr. Floyd will kill it ala the CRU folks who disdain critics.
MOBIUS PROJECT – Brunt’s vs. Connor’s version you decide
http://friendsofmarkfuhrman.org/blog/… RPS fraud & new Idaho lawsuit & Cover up of manslaughter death of Jo Savage in RPS garage
http://friendsofmarkfuhrman.org/blog/… Until there is transparency in policy decision making in Spokane we are destined to repeat these mistakes of the past that have been very costly to the citizens of Spokane. The same goes to major shifts in the world’s economic policy when based on suspect/flawed research/
investigations.
UPDATE II:
I just posted this comment in the S-R blog thread on this continuing debate:
Ron_the_Cop on December 01 at 9:17 a.m.
To All,
I strongly recommend a read of today’s WSJ OP/ED piece I linked to above by MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard S. Lindzen. Here’s his bio at Wikipedia if you put any stock in Wikipedia as a credible source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_…
Anyway if you don’t read the entire article here’s his the lede of his piece:
[Title – The Climate Science Isn’t Settled – Confident prediction of catastrophe are unwarranted]
” What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of “bait and switch” scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.
The notion that complex climate “catastrophes” are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.
Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well. ”
UPDATE III:
I just posted this update in the Spokesman-Review blog debate on climategate:
UPDATE IV:
Another good OP/ED piece at PJM:
Climategate – it ain’t just about the weather
Climategate is about a lot more than climate. It’s about science and its relationship to politics and profit, the academy, the state and, perhaps most importantly, information control. The manner through which we learn (or thought we did) important knowledge about key aspects of our existence, the way things are hidden, has been exposed in this one instance like the Wizard of Oz. . .
UPDATE V:
OK the AP has been out to lunch – Copenhagen v. Climategate
OK the AP has been out to lunch and missed the story that’s been hot for over a week in the new/alternative/social media. Not one mention in this story of Climategate!
High hopes, hurdles await at Copenhagen summit
Climate conference expected to bring agreement starts Monday
UPDATE VI:
I’m starting a new thread on this debate at:
Ron_the_Cop on December 02 at 8:55 a.m.
To All,
Again my interest in this debate has more to do with the social media digging into and running with this story – keeping it in the public’s eye while the MSM has been late to the starting gate.
PJTV has a new short online video on this controversy:
CLIMATEGATE: Follow the Money, Find the Power, Expose the Lies
http://www.pjtv.com/v/2778
Fascinating that the new media can produce such a video and distribute at very low cost without a large capital investment in infrastructure.
Here’s a WSJ editorial review video re cap & trade and faltering of political support for regulation of C02:
Copenhagen’s Collapse 11/23/2009
http://online.wsj.com/video/copenhage…
Global Warming Revolt
A carbon tax faces new opposition.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001…
[Note: My links to the WSJ may change as the WSJ archives them. Just Google the titles or use the search engine on WSJ’s site to find them when the URL changes]
Flag as inappropriate
Ron_the_Cop on December 02 at 8:58 a.m.
The LTEs today in the WSJ are also provide interesting critique on what we are witnessing/developing before before our eyes:
We Deserve Ethical Behavior by Climate Scientists
I applaud you for keeping the key claims in East Anglia climatologist Phil Jones’s emails before our attention (“Rigging a Climate ‘Consensus’,” Review & Outlook, Nov. 28). These emails clearly speak of attempts to silence critics. One defense is that, though the scientists wanted to stifle their critics, they still have the best science. It is extremely hard to judge whether that is so. The second defense from Phil Jones himself is that the emails represent what close colleagues say to one another.
That defense merits additional consideration. We have not seen the scientific community or wider academic community rise up and say, “We don’t speak that way to one another. We don’t tolerate it.” Much public money is poured into academic science and the other disciplines. We deserve ethical behavior. It might seem clever for Mike Hulme, another East Anglia climatologist, to treat the emails as the unattractive excesses of tribalism within climate science, which will right itself. The research university is dedicated to free and critical exchange. That standard gives those who work within it a special authority over our attention. When they abuse that standard, the behavior is not unattractive tribalism; it is ethically repugnant abuse of responsibility. Let’s be clear about that.
Charles Spinosa, Ph.D.
New York
The climate research debacle that is the subject of your editorial once again illustrates that ultimately the market for scientific research is efficient. It took until 1992 for the Roman Catholic Church to acknowledge its errors in its 1633 judgment of Galileo’s science. It took much less than a year for the scientific community, and no time for the metal futures markets, to discount the bogus 1989 announcement by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann that they were able to produce free energy. The major difference now is that the rigging of a climate consensus has serious implications regarding the use of the coercive power of governments over the individual. It is up to the scientific community to maintain and safeguard its immunity from the world of politics, or otherwise see its relevance discounted.
Oscar Varela, Ph.D.
Professor of Finance
University of Texas at El Paso
El Paso, Texas
[Continued below]
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Ron_the_Cop on December 02 at 9:02 a.m.
WJE LTEs continued from above:
Your Nov. 24 editorial “Global Warming With the Lid Off” gives interesting details about what we skeptics have known for some time because of actions by proponents of global warming. Most skeptics have become armored against attacks lacking real substance.
One notable example is the reaction given the Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark, who was interviewed by Discover magazine (July 2007 issue) after he reported on his important research into cloud formation. Prof. Svensmark had released studies in 1996 showing that “changes in the sun’s activity could explain most or all of the recent rise in Earth’s temperature.” As a result, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel called his views “extremely naïve and irresponsible.”
Prof. Svensmark responded to the magazine reporter’s question on this attack by the world panel by saying, “I was just stunned. I remember being shocked by how many thought what I was doing was terrible. I couldn’t understand it because when you are a physicist, you are trained that when you find something that cannot be explained, something that doesn’t fit, that is what you are excited about.” He went on to say that critics essentially were saying: “This is something that you should not have done.” Critics were referring to his pioneering research on how the sun’s activity controls how clouds are formed in the atmosphere, which in turn cools the earth when present, or warms the earth when few clouds are formed.
To be fair, Prof. Svensmark does support the idea that CO2 in the atmosphere can capture heat from the sun, but he believes that this mechanism may well be orders of magnitude less important than the cloud formation mechanism controlled by the sun.
Trying to control warming by controlling CO2 is probably futile. We would need to control the sun’s activity instead, which is clearly impossible.
Paul Chapman
Retired engineer
North Tustin, Calif.
[Note: WSJ LTE’s are open source and readily available to all. I’m posting them here in their entirety as the URL link will change after today. Here’s the URL link for today]
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/let…