Another Blow To The "Consensus"
Turns Out 1934 Is The Hottest Year On Record
By Martin A. Knight Posted in Policy — Comments (52) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Oh the humanity ...
The next decade will be a hot one, according to scientists unveiling the first 10-year projection of global warming.
The climate projection, published today in the journal Science, suggests that a natural cooling trend in eastern and southern Pacific ocean waters has kept a lid on warming in recent years.
And it will continue to do so, scientists say, but not for long.
The projection spans 2006 to 2015. "At least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record," the researchers say in their report.
Err ... not anymore.
Read on ...
Note that the above link is to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies;
One of the most cited and used historical surface temperature databases is that of NASA/Goddard's GISS. This is not some weird skeptics site. It is considered one of the premier world temperature data bases, and it is maintained by anthropogenic global warming true believers. It has consistently shown more warming than any other data base, and is thus a favorite source for folks like Al Gore. These GISS readings in the US rely mainly on the US Historical Climate Network (USHCN) which is a network of about 1000 weather stations taking temperatures, a number of which have been in place for over 100 years.
Please note that there are many problems with the USHCN's network of weather stations and many valid questions have been raised as to whether they are even located and/or calibrated properly so that scientists can distinguish their environment's true temperature, accurately accounting for interference caused by unique local variables i.e. the infamous "urban heat island" effect.
We can assume that these things are continually being looked into and improved though ... but it also means that we should nonetheless cast a skeptical eye toward USHCN's previous data, despite being the most extensive and maintained (for over a century) network of weather stations in the world.
But that's not the main issue here. The main issue is that the algorithm used by the GISS to come to its conclusion (which is present in almost every single article about Global Warming) that 1998 and 2006 are the two hottest years on record, the same study used by Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth, has conclusively (and this has been accepted by one of the two conductors of the study) been proven wrong. What this means is that even if there were no problems with the USHCN's numbers, even if they were a 100% accurate, their conclusion would still have been wrong.
The GISS recently updated their numbers to reflect this ... and now the hottest year on record is 1934 (and note that this is before most of today's major airports, urban sprawl and the huge jump in the use of energy by the addition of at least a 100 million more people into the American population). 1998 is now the second hottest year on record, followed by 1921.
In fact;
In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.
Here's the new ranking (in order):
1934 | 1998 | 1921 | 2006 | 1931 | 1999 | 1953 | 1990 | 1938 | 1939
Contrary to the swarm of Leftist true-believers in the faith that is Anthropogenic Global Warming ... er ... "Climate Change" that may soon descend on this site because of posts like this may say, this is a very big deal. More so because of the involvement of one of the heroes/prophets of the religion of man-caused Global "Climate Change" - James Hansen, who rose to fame as the incandescently pure-hearted, public-spirited, thoroughly non-partisan scientist being threatened with death and destruction by the actively "anti-scientific" Bush Administration, or so the narrative goes.
Quoth CBS:
As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.
Of course, during the period of his "muzzling" he has managed to write many articles, given numerous interviews (on 60 minutes no less), given many speeches to environmental organizations and other organizations, given testimony to Congress, and even featured in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. Considering that this was a major risk, he is arguably one of the bravest men in Government today.
But I digress. Above the fold, I wrote that there were two major conductors of the study by the GISS that established that 1998 was the hottest year on record. One of them, Dr. Reto Ruedy, responded to Steve McIntyre of climateaudit.org, gracefully acknowledging the error in their algorithm and announcing the correction;
When we did our monthly update this morning, an offset based on the last 10 years of overlap in the two data sets was applied and our on-line documentation was changed correspondingly with an acknowledgment of your contribution. This change and its effect will be noted in our next paper on temperature analysis and in our end-of-year temperature summary.
The other person who co-conducted the GISS study with Dr. Ruedy? Dr. James Hansen.
Note that McIntyre, together with Ross McKitrick, the former a former mining executive, the latter an economist, both Canadians, is part of the duo who showed that Michael Mann's infamous "Hockey Stick" graph that supposedly incontrovertibly illustrates the "unprecedented" rise of global temperatures as a result of man's actions was flawed. Very flawed. McIntyre and McKitrick were able to prove that Mann (who unscientifically refused to release his algorithm, methodology and software source code for critical review) was an illiterate in high-order statistics; his algorithm produced hockey stick shaped graphs no matter what numbers were input into it.
The really interesting thing to note here though, is that McIntyre was forced to reverse-engineer GISS's algorithm because they continue to withhold it from public scrutiny. Yet he was able to successfully prove that GISS numbers were incorrect with what he had to go on. McIntyre's letter (NOTE: first update) to Ruedy and Hansen asks:
In addition, could you provide me with any documentation (additional to already published material) providing information on the calculation of GISS raw and adjusted series from USHCN versions, including relevant source code.
While Ruedy admirably responds, he does not address McIntyre's request for methodology and source code at all, and so far there is no indication so far that these would be forthcoming anytime soon. Which is all too reminiscent of Mann's behavior when the wherewithal of his cherished "Hockey Stick" was called into question. Scientists are not, I repeat, not supposed to be anything other than enthusiastic about having their work subjected to critical scrutiny.
Yet, far too many of the climate scientists given great credibility, their every word and admonition broadcasted as received wisdom by the media, seem to be the opposite. In fact, more than anything else, they seek to silence their challengers, and often do so by resorting to ad hominem attacks and threats to their careers.
This is very disturbing ... because these are things that should have been made public together with their findings and no-one noticed for all these years. Worse? These are algorithms and source code developed and paid for with public money - why are they being kept hidden from the public?
Make no mistake, people like James Hansen and Michael Mann are a major part of the reason why climatology is perhaps the only field of the physical sciences where dissent is practically akin to heresy.
The proprietor of Coyote Blog sums this up nicely;
So how is this possible? How can the global warming numbers used in critical policy decisions and scientific models be so wrong with so basic of an error? And how can this error have gone undetected for the better part of a decade? The answer to the latter question is because the global warming and climate community resist scrutiny. This weeks Newsweek article and statements by Al Gore are basically aimed at suppressing any scientific criticism or challenge to global warming research. That is why NASA can keep its temperature algorithms secret, with no outside complaint, something that would cause howls of protest in any other area of scientific inquiry.
This remarkable hostility to criticism is a hundred times more actively "anti-scientific" than anything the Bush Administration has ever done outside of the fevered imaginations of the "Reality Based Community." And the refusal (or even just hesitation) of these men in making public their methodology to arriving at their conclusions should be a scandal embarassing to every single climate scientist because by their actions, their unscientific secretly, insularity, and most especially the never-ending personal and professional threats and attacks on skeptics, they are rendering the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming into an unfalsifiable theory - which is not science.
And with their contingent of supporters in the media, these are people who could be guiding the next few years setting of national policy that affects each and every single American, from property rights up to and including what you can do in your own home. It's not the fact that they could be wrong that should scare you. It is the fact that they refuse to even consider the possibility that they could be wrong that should terrify you.
[Hat tip to Climate Audit, Ace, Coyote Blog, Tigerhawk and HotAir - please read them all - especially Climate Audit and Coyote Blog].
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Another Blow To The "Consensus" 52 Comments (0 topical, 52 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
... flawed though they may be, is from the contiguous United States ... well, let me just quote Coyote;
The GISS today makes it clear that these adjustments only affect US data and do not change any of their conclusions about worldwide data. But consider this: For all of its faults, the US has the most robust historical climate network in the world. If we have these problems, what would we find in the data from, say, China? And the US and parts of Europe are the only major parts of the world that actually have 100 years of data at rural locations. No one was measuring temperature reliably in rural China or Paraguay or the Congo in 1900. That means much of the world is relying on urban temperature measurement points that have substantial biases from urban heat.
My question is this ... using their previous algorithm, was 1998 the warmest year on record in the United States? If so, why should we assume that their flawed algorithm holds true for the rest of the world which has less reliable data, while it uniquely does not for the United States?
George W. Bush: He's A Folder ... Not A Fighter.
When you consider that NOAA requires all temperature sensing stations to be 100ft from asphalt paving or from buildings, you may want to stop giving US temperature stations so much credit.
and this one in no way meet such a rigorous standard. I wonder what other BS is in the GISS data.
"Scott Thomas" - The New Republic's Winter Soldier
Martin, You Are Too Nice a Guy
Well, I do try ...
That said, what I'm trying to say is that America still maintains the best records in the world and as you've pointed out, there are still some major problems there. How bad do you think it is in other parts of the world?
George W. Bush: He's A Folder ... Not A Fighter.
are different, and your post, and Coyote's, do not always make the distinction clear. Globally, 1998 is often cited as the hottest year, and only later years like 2005 come close. In the contiguous US, 1998 was also a hot year, and it has always been acknowledged that 1934 is another close contender for the hottest. After this latest small adjustment, 1934 is listed as +1.25C, and 1998 as +1.23C, a very small difference. The argument as to which was warmer in the US can go on for ever, but it has very little to do with AGW.
This particular table isn't a headline item on the GISS site, and it is attributed there to a Dr Sato, so I don't know if Hansen is the right person to pile on to.
Its hard to keep track with all the revisions
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
From usatoday:
The projection spans 2006 to 2015. "At least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be warmer than 1998, the warmest year currently on record," the researchers say in their report.
....
The decade covering 1996 to 2006 contained the warmest years ever recorded, with temperatures peaking in 1998 and nearly reaching that height in 2005.
No mention of 1998 'global' temperature or the source of the temperature data (no data at all actually). Specifics are important if you want to crush the world economy because of a predicted threat.
I love this bit:
"The creators of older climate models are most confident about their projections for the years around 2040, making a new decade projection especially important to politicians and other decision-makers, agrees Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "If this works, it is a good step forward," he says, but cautions that ocean temperature measurements vital to the decadal model are limited. Such measures are now fairly low tech, usually involving boats and thermometers [umm, water temperature measurement involving boats and thermometers, who knew? ed.]. "
To paraphrase, 'we're much better at making predictions that can't be verified (or even remembered) far into the future, than we are at predicting something where the results will be readily observable in the near term'.
See, if the models don't work, it's the fault of the measuring devices, not the hypothesis. The climate is changing, its a Known Fact.
How many investors would these guys attract if they had as manufacturing process for making a product as successfulas they have been for predicting future weather patterns? IIRC, the National Hurricane center just revised down again the number of storms predicted for this year. And these guys are the best in the business.
Is the world getting warmer? This week in Virginia, in August, the answer is yes. Ask me again in February where my prediction ia a call for snow. Unless I revise it - in March.
But seriously, is global warming occurring? Maybe, I'm an engineer, not a climatolgist but the data is not conclusive. The world has indisputably been both warmer and cooler than it is right now. Everything cycles.
Where I get worried is that the believers 'scientists' studiously ignore water vapor (the largest and most powerful contributor of the greenhouse gasses) and focus on the one modern manmade component (one of the smallest contributors).
They also ignore the Solar contribution. The sun drives ALL weather on the planet and it goes through well documented cycles . Until these, and other issues are explained with rigorous scientific disciplne and accurate backwards compatible models, I will refuse to collapse the economy and live in the stone age to suit some globe trotting eco-bureaucrats with delusuions of grandeur.
It's pretty clear from the context of the USA Today report that they are talking about global temperatures, including this graph, which sat beside the text:
You infer global temperatures, but it does not state that. We are dealing with a scientific 'fact' - inferrence doesn't cut it (not jumping on you here, but the morons journalists morons at usatoday).
But why then is 1934 much lower data point on the chart than 1998 when the temperatures were (depending on the data) equal to or slightly higher? How about 1934? or 1953?
None of those data points are represented. If that is an aggregate of global temperatures, then is USAToday saying that the US is not even close to the norm? I must have missed that part.
Perhaps someone was doing some data 'smoothing' to present a more 'persuasive' chart. That seems to be the case so far.
Specifically, where around the globe were accurate temperature measurements being taken in 1860 (according to the artwork)? Why 1860? why not 1840 or 1735 or 1910? These articles are not written to prove the issue, they are written to bolster a pre-determined conclusion.
My point is that the reporting is typically (deliberately?) sloppy and meant more to emote rather than inform.
The temperature change, if not an artifact of noise in the system, is not as steep or jagged as implied in the fear-mongering graph you cite.
1oF in 147 years is much closer to a flat line than the mountain presented.
That graph is designed to mislead people into thinking something important is happening.
In reality, you are part of a giant public hysteria about a change of less than 2% in almost 150 years.
If Hansen uses taxpayer money to fund his research, his algorithms, source data and methodologies should all be susceptable to FOIA requests.
"Scott Thomas" - The New Republic's Winter Soldier
Well done. A clear and concise explanaition of the fraud being perpetrated on the citizenry.
The Left has used ideology, brute force, terror, subterfuge, revisionism and now a manufactured religious fervor in order to suppress the masses and gain power over our every aspect of our lives. The true believers will never be convinced by mere scientific data that thier 'faith' has been misplaced. They are responding to a higher calling, fighting the good fight.
If that's not religion, I don't know what qualifies.
So is Gore the new Dzerzhinsky, suppressing those who would dissent? Or is he the high priest of gaia? Perhaps closer to Torquemada given his speaking style.
"The true believers will never be convinced by mere scientific data that thier 'faith' has been misplaced. They are responding to a higher calling, fighting the good fight.
If that's not religion, I don't know what qualifies."
You use these sentences to support your viewpoint!
You do realize that there isn't ANY recent peer reviewed scientific research that disputes AGW!
"You use these sentences to support your viewpoint!"
Umm, yeah. That's because I type faster than I draw.
"You do realize that there isn't ANY recent peer reviewed scientific research that disputes AGW!"
Prove it! (Hey, you used a sentence too!) Can you prove there are no peer reviewed papers disproving global warming? I can prove that the earth has been both warmer and cooler than it is right now. I can prove that CO2 lags warming temperatures. Those two facts raise your conjecture of man made global warming to a level where extraordinary proof is needed, not just predictive models that are incapable of even duplicating past data.
Given the pitiful process where, for 10 years(!), this erroneous data has been cited and used as 'proof' (along with hansen's hockey stick), I'd say the onus of proof in on the believers at this point.
But hey, what do I know - I use sentences to support my viewpoints.
You're welcome to your theories, but I just find it funny that you think that the side of the debate that has mountains of peer reviewed research versus the side that doesn't have any is the side that you think is closed minded to science!
I can't prove your negative....well bully me I guess that means there isn't any AGW!
The problem?
So many of those "peer-reviewed" studies are being disproven by others outside the clique, and even by time, every day.
Which is a problem considering that many additional, similarly "peer reviewed" studies are based on the conclusions drawn by the previous studies which are being proven wrong today.
People who base their studies on Mann, Hansen, et al. are ending up discovering they were standing on the shoulders of midgets, not giants.
I guess that means there isn't any AGW!
No. We all concede that there may be GW. It's the A part we're a little iffy about.
George W. Bush: He's A Folder ... Not A Fighter.
as the desktop publisher, reporting directly to the managing editor and daily contact with the copy editors, as well as getting to hang out with governmental types who do peer reviewing.
...
As a result, I have no faith in "peer review."
I only believe things where the data, the sources, and the methodologies are open for anyone, Piled Higher and Deepered or not, can review everything for errors.
AGW - anthropogenic global warming- is certainly disputed by peer reviewed papers and scientists.
The extent of it, the impact of human activity, etc.
But if you want to believe it, go ahead.
I fear that the continued denial of global warming is damaging the authority of the right, making us look unreliable (See this week’s Newsweek cover story). I live in Alaska and agw is a serious problem, not just every glacier melting, villages disappearing and warm weather insects like bark beetles killing 100’s of thousands of acres of forests.
I hate sending 100’s of billions to the Saudis, Chavez, Iran, Libya and Russia.
Wesley Clark: With the consequences of global warming already so severe, global warming has to be treated as a national security problem, involving not just the EPA but also the National Security Council and the top leadership of America. Global warming is a national security issue.
Defense Department: A hair-raising Pentagon report on the potentially imminent and colossal national security threat posed by climate change. The report wasn't penned by members of the "Chicken Little sky-is-falling crowd" but by Peter Schwartz, former head of planning for Shell Oil and sometime CIA consultant, and Doug Randall of the Global Business Network, a California think tank. "The traditional triggers of conflict which exist out there are likely to be exacerbated by the effect of climate change," said Emyr Jones Parry, Britain's UN ambassador.
Gingrich said he will be pushing for a way to deal with climate change that is not heavy on regulation — a point on which he criticized Kerry's plan. "I want to suggest that we need a new science- and technology-based, entrepreneurial, market-oriented and locally led environmentalism," Gingrich said. Gingrich raised some discrepancies among the science that has led to the current data on climate change, but when asked pointedly about science doubters, like Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Gingrich strongly held the case that climate change is a problem.
President Bush: “In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it." He insisted the United States "is committed to collaborating with other major economies" on a new global framework for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. President Bush agreed with leaders at a Group of Eight summit in June to make "substantial" but unspecified reductions in greenhouse emissions and to negotiate a new global climate pact that would broaden the Kyoto Protocol beyond its 2012 expiration.
Rev. Pat Robertson: It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a build-up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. If we are contributing to the destruction of this planet, we need to do something about it.”
I think Conservatives are most afraid of carbon taxes and heavy-handed government regulation. But we will not have a say if we are still debating against overwhelming scientific research.
And if you like investing, on this dark Dow day, think about this the way the venture capitalist do – More money will flow into alternative energy and technology (Google nano-phosphate batteries GM) that what went into the Internet in the 90’s.
The reason weather algorithms used by the US government are not available to the public is for national security reasons. Weather prediction has been, and continues to be of strategic value to the armed services. There are certainly unclassified algorithms that are released, but it's possible the one in question is classified or part of a larger classified project and extracting and declassifying the piece not worth the headache. Given the importance of this debate forcing this to become public for peer review sounds like a good plan to me though.
The best weather data is from satellites since they cover large portions of the globe instead of just the relatively small US mainland. Local weather stations just have too many problems (as you pointed out) and provide too few data points for them to be as useful. The biggest benefit is the 100 year history which allows for longer trends.
Al Gore's real argument rests on ice cores which cover 650,000 years though. The correlation between temperate and CO2 is pretty clear in those and so far as I can tell not in any real dispute. The question is did CO2 cause higher temperatures, did higher temperatures cause higher CO2, or did some other thing cause both? Plus the artificial introduction of large amounts of CO2 needs to be understood. I don't know about you, but it can't be shown he's clearly wrong yet and if he's right we could have some pretty significant changes ahead. I guess I prefer to error on the side of caution when possible.
The ice core data shows an incredible correlation between CO2 and Temperature.
It gets warm
CO2 levels go up.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Did you mean the other way around ?
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
...and wanted some information on it. But yeah, just knowledge of plant cycles would lead one to believe that higher CO2 levels are an inevitable consequence of higher temperatures.
"I don't understand why the same newspaper commentators who bemoan the terrible education given to poor people are always so eager to have those poor people get out and vote." - P.J. O'Rourke
in a glass of warm soda pop and watch it give up CO2. Assuming that sea water would behave in the same manner, COOLER ocean temperatures would cause the oceans to out-gas CO2. The additional CO2 in the atmosphere, if the science is right, would warm the atmosphere and over time the warmer atmosphere would warm the oceans bring about a rough equilibrium. Sounds like an elegant system to me.
In Vino Veritas
An ice cube disturbs the solution.
The cooling effect actually increases the solubility of CO2. Most gases are more soluble in colder water
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
over how representative the concentrations of CO2 are to the time when the ice was formed. Pressures of the ice mass affect the concentration of CO2.Should also affect the solubility of CO2, but I'm an engineer not a chemist.
The above is simply cherry picking to suit a preconceived notion.
You want to cherry pick
Today's NY Times on Arctic ice-
"The area of floating ice in the Arctic has shrunk more this summer than in any other summer since satellite tracking began in 1979, and it has reached that record point a month before the annual ice pullback typically peaks, experts said yesterday".
What does this mean in and of itself to AGW? Absolutely nothing.
Do you know the meaning of irony, grinder? At all?
What does this mean in and of itself to AGW? Absolutely nothing.
Of course. If every single thing, including the temperature record(!), that contradicts (or just casts doubt on) the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory automatically means "absolute nothing" ... you can see where the whole thing starts to deviate from science to faith, right?
George W. Bush: He's A Folder ... Not A Fighter.
It means that the ice COULD be melting for reasons other than AGW. Or it means the ice might not be melting....1979-2007 is statistically insignificant....or it could mean dozens of things.
Similarly, conclusions can't be drawn by going gotcha at 1934 or 1998.
HERETIC! Burn him at the stake! It's the only way the deniers will bow to the overwhelming evidence only their betters alone can understand!
Hanging's too good for him!
Come to think of it, Burning's too good for him!
He should be torn into itty bitty pieces and buried alive!
/End Channeling
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread. There will be no further interuptions from the AWG denizens.
As usual, on the cutting edge.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
Thats about 3 million sq. km. less northern ice than 50 years ago. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
You can argue methodologies, measurement techniques and data presentation relentlessly. However, I suspect that eventually the evidence of global warming, coming from everywhere, not just histrionic ex-candidates, will overwhelm the most die-hard skeptics.
Newsweek on the denial machine: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/page/0/
Yes I'm a liberal, and a Climate Change "TrueBeliever", though no I don't think that we need to destroy industrial society to overcome this challenge, to me the facts are staring us in the face.
Liberal, yep. Freaky hippy-dippy San Francisco Liberal at that. Though I won't wear tie-die on principal.
You can't seriously be proposing that the Newsweek article serves as some sort of persuasive argument that will "overwhelm the most die-hard skeptics."
That article concentrates on how "well-funded" the skeptic (or so called "denier") community is, without mentioning that the Global Warming agenda is funded at astonishingly higher levels. (Like billions of dollars to the "deniers" millions.) Oversights like this render the credibility of the rest of the article more than simply suspect.
No, I think that the scientific evidence that is delivered daily will overwhelm the deniers.
It's interesting that of all the oil companies with significant vested interest in downplaying the risks in order to influence legislation, it's really only ExxonMobil that is spending significant money to fund the "research" these days. (Oddly enough, with Phillip Morris, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatechangedenial and http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2006/09/19/Lett... (PDF) )
Shell, Chevron, etc. are involved, at least, in PR campaigns to show that they support action to reduce CO2 emmissions.
http://www.willyoujoinus.com/ - Chevron site
http://www.shell.com/home/content/envirosoc-en/environment/climatechange/dirclimatechange000407.html - Shell Oil
Though Shell's CEO went a little further last September:
The Shell Oil Co. president, addressing a group in St. Louis Thursday, said as far as the company was concerned, the debate over the science of global climate change is over.
"It's a waste of time to debate it," he said. "Policymakers have a responsibility to address it. The nation needs a public policy. We'll adjust."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14733060/
Poster is a California liberal, but not insane, really.
That the AGW believers will simply continue to censor and intimidate those who dare disagree, regardless of inconvenient things like fact or truth. that would be a more accurate statement, based on the behavior of AGW believers and promoters.
It's tie-dye. You're dyeing it, not killing it.
Anyway, referencing the northern ice is still relying on methodologies, measurement techniques and data presentation isn't it? Unless, have you been there? You know ... twice?
I'm just saying. You are implying that none of this discussion matters in the face of eyeball evidence, but you don't present any such evidence.
You can argue methodologies, measurement techniques and data presentation relentlessly. However, I suspect that eventually the evidence of global warming, coming from everywhere ... will overwhelm the most die-hard skeptics.
I see you wisely chose the word "overwhelm" instead of "convince" - you kind of alluded to the political as opposed to the scientific nature of much of climate science today.
And by the way, there is no way one can separate evidence from methodology, measurement techniques, underlying assumptions, etc. That's at the very basis of the argument between skeptics and the true believers. That you apparently believe they are separate issues as opposed to completely dependent on each other is not a good thing ...
PS: That my uncle once worked as a bellboy in a hotel where the man who would, twenty years later, become the senior Vice-President in charge of Marketing at Oil Company X stayed for a week, has what bearing on my scientific studies?
Let me answer that. None. You do not establish the validity or falseness of a scientific study by looking at its sources of funding or whether or not the scientist has a link to industry. You look at the person's work and evaluate it on that basis, i.e. based on his methodology, measurement techniques and all that boring stuff. You subject it to scrutiny and you demand all his notes, algorithms, the provenance of his data, his collection techniques, etc. so you can attempt to replicate it.
What does it say that Mann, Hansen and so many of their friends in the Global Warming true believer camp are so loath to having their work reviewed in their entirety? Why do they try to keep the key stuff, yes, that would be the "methodologies, measurement techniques and data presentation" secret?
PPS: what that Newsweek article is, is simply an attempt to smear dissenters from the "Consensus." There's just as much, perhaps even more money, in being a Global Warming true-believer.
George W. Bush: He's A Folder ... Not A Fighter.
whether the climate is changing. It's always changing. The argument is over whether the changes are caused by man or natural phenomena. Therefore, whether the Arctic Ice mass is smaller than ever before is not germane to the argument. The only reason that people are jumping all over the errors in reported temperatures is that the dta has been used to "prove" that the latest changes in temperature correlate well with large increases in atmospheric CO2 emitted by man. If in fact the temperatures haven't changed as much as advertised, maybe the "proof" is a little weak.
.
By the way, I've seen some theories on the mass of Arctic ice being correlated to low cloud cover. I'm too busy to Google it now, but have a ball looking.
We actually have very little recorded history on this.
It is also interesting to be reading that it is likely soot, not temperature, that has contributed to recent melts in ice caps. The soot absorbs solar radiation better than ice, heating up, and the soot praticles tend to 'tunnel' into ice by differential heating.
The evidence from Greenland ice is that the ice caps are much more durable over broad climate swings than AGW promoters would have people beleive.
But whatever you believe, do not insult the intelligence of people by making an infantile assertion about how faulty methods can possibly yield valid results. 'False but true' only works in journalism, and then only some of the time.
That is most revealing in this. Instead of simply coming out and sharing the algorithm, and looking for the problem, they have stone walled.
Just like with the discovery that there are significant long term problem in the accuracy of the weather stations in the US, the reaction of the AGW promoters is to cover up the important information that conflicts with their conclusions.
So now we see this:
-Hurricanes are not getting more powerful or more frequent.
-the hockey stick is not valid
-temperature sampling is not reliable
-temperature graphing over time is incorrect
AGW still does not explain past, larger, swings in climate variation.
AGW avoids debate and disclosure.
AGW relies on making wild untrue claims of great conspiracies of 'deniers' to intimidate skeptics.
AGW promoters make wild over-the-top calims not supported by evidence
AGW claims to explain all notable weather events, whether unique, unusual or typical.
AGW is non-falisfiable
So what is left? I see the whole political aspect of climate management by AGW promtoers falling apart fairly soon.
I don't deny (or accept) global warming. I just don't know, and apparently neither do the 'faithful'.
I DO know that I reject the pseudo-science being foisted upon us by those who have a political agenda, and are using this latest trojan horse to further that cause.
They do not behave like people who have actually discovered something. They act like politicians rationalizing a desired policy.
The lack of transparency, the reliance on arguing from authority, the aspersions cast on doubters, the ratcheting up of hysterical claims that never come true, these are the tools of AGW. They are part and parcel of selling a social movement, not of telling a true story. Look at how people in science talk about discoveries on Mars, or radio astronomy, or geology or paleontology - the presentation and behavior is very different.
AGW is going to go down in history as a case of science run amuck.
Wasn't Dr Hansen the one who said Bush was exerting political pressure to change his views on globull warming, while at the same time he was responsible for the USHCN errors? An accident, mere oversight I am sure.
It's interesting that most globull warming alarmists view the US data as the gold standard in the world. I am sure the rest of the data taken worldwide could stand up to the same level of scrutiny, don't you? OK, I know that (insert third world country name here) data is around here someplace ...
Interesting ...
The cause of the Earth's fever has been found. Who will tell the Goracle?
I really dislike the idea that the algorithms used here are not open for critical analysis. That is extremely poor scientific practice. We definitely need continuing critiquing of our temperature gathering methods to avoid errors like this.
That said, this was a rather small change to CONUS numbers only, and does not have a great effect on mean global temperatures. The criticism that "if the US was wrong they are all wrong!" is harder to believe when one sees the agreement between satellite and ground based temperature measurements (over the lifetime of satellite measurements).
Believe me, if the discovery of one error, somewhere, in science is cause for you to disbelieve the whole thing, well, you should just reject all science right now. Science is not error-free, it is built to be self-correcting. I'm glad to see it worked here, and very concerned that the opaqueness of the methodology made it so difficult.
-jb
Martin's point is that the "self-correcting" mechanism of science to which you refer is the open publication of raw data and methodologies to peer review: precisely the pieces that are missing in the AWG jihad.
I see your claim, and it certainly holds in the particular of this case, as I mentioned in my post. However, do you have any basis for comparing the relative openness of data sets in the area of climate change to the openness of data sets in other branches of science? If you do not, do you deny as strongly the conclusions of those other branches?
-jb
Does anybody know the name of the research institution in Greenwich, that was conveniently forced to discontinue its website of temperature readings by Al Gore and friends? I can't remember the name, but I would be interested to see if they have some other site.
"A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master." -George Washington
Looking a little closer (and as the other RS blog points out),
The effect on global means and all our tables was less than 0.01 C. In the display most sensitive to that change - the US-graph of annual means - the anomalies decreased by about 0.15 C in the years 2000-2006.
Only temperatures from 2000-2006 were affected, the years 1998 and 1934 were not even changed(sorry OP) and global means were essentially unchanged. The error was not some systematic problem with temperature measurements, it was the incorrect merger of two data sets. This is important for the principal of good data, but if you find this to undermine all climate change science you are overreaching.
-jb
I'm sure others will have a lot to say in more detail about the GISS figures, but there the contradiction you try to point to in your first few paragraphs just isn't there. The USA Today report says that 1998 is the hottest year globally ( 2005 is very cose), while the GISS figures refer to the contiguous US, where 1934 was certainly a warm year.