Slashdot Mirror

Easy. 'Hockey stick data' is at https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/... You will find raw station data at https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/h...

Like Geoffrey said, all the data is available. Your lack of searching doesn't mean it isn't there.

sponsored by the alcoholic beverage industry

Just a few of those doing those 'alcohol industry backed' studies:

The School of Public Health at Harvard University
Catholic University of Campobasso
Kew-Kim Chew, epidemiologist, University of West Australia
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University
Edward J. Neafsey, Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago
University of East Anglia

There are more. It looks like, according to you, the six universites above are in the pocket of the alcohol industry. Your claim, now go about backing it up.

Well fuck me. You're happy to see innocents burn to catch some guilty fuckers.

I'd rather see every guilty fucker get away than punish a single innocent person.

Go Magna Carta clause 39 yourself up before you have an aneurysm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://magnacarta.cmp.uea.ac.u...

And if you're American - due process clauses are written in your constitution.

We can't accurately predict the weather for 5 days

Can't predict a coinflip either, yet we can predict very accurately the average result of 10,000 coinflips. Same with climate, which is a long-term aggregate of countless individual weather events. But sure, all those thousands of egghead climate scientists from all over the planet are obviously just making shit up, right? And apparently coordinating it all in a massive global conspiracy.

It's not a fact.

Then how do you explain the vast amount of peer-reviewed evidence supporting it that's cited in the IPCC reports? Gonna wave that all away?

There certainly is a huge monetary motivation to say it's NOT a fact.

Fixed that for you. And if you doubt me, let me know if you find any monetary motivation bigger than $33 trillion in stranded assets. Or perhaps just compare salaries.

Everything they do makes it LOOK like they are covering shit up.

According to whom? Certainly the studies cited in the IPCC reports are about as clear as it can get. Every scientific institution and meteorological department in the world endorses its conclusions - are all of them also covering this shit up, risking their reputations and sabotaging everything science stands for? Or perhaps other interests just want you to think so? There's certainly plenty of direct evidence for that.

You want data? Oh we deleted it.

Oh look, found it again.

You have an opinion we don't agree with?

Then provide evidence to back it up, or STFU. That's how science works.

The curves don't match what we said was going to happen ten years ago?

They look OK to me.

Don't get me started on having Al Gore as a spokeman

Haha, nobody elected Gore as any sort of spokesman other than himself, and certainly he has ZERO to do with the scientific case for AGW. That's like saying the entire Republican party are frauds because Trump is kind of a dick.

show me a solution that does NOT put us back into the dark ages

Well first off, the type of solution has NOTHING to do with the existence of the problem. Seriously, are you really going to deny the problem even exists just because you don't like someone's proposed solution to it? Is that rational?

Second, there are any number of proposed solutions. Pick some that you like. Nuclear is fine by me, if you can make an economic case for it (and certainly in some areas it makes a lot of sense). Solar and wind are obvious choices to be part of the energy mix, particularly in areas where there's lot of sun and/or wind. Geothermal, wave power, thorium - there are plenty of carbon-neutral energy sources to choose from.

And for intermittency, power companies already have to deal with that, since no power plant is perfect - e.g. coal plants are offline 40-60% of the time, so they have to be covered too. The answer is wide distribution and redundancy from a variety of sources ("the wind always blows somewhere") with some storage

A lot of far left types seem to think that drug companies are just ripping off inventions of the government and/or universities, or worse, that they deliberately withhold permanent cures in favor of temporary ones. With that in mind, I am somewhat curious why universities and the government haven't come up with a solution if indeed the drug companies truly provide no benefit.

Though for their part, some universities are doing the research:

https://www.uea.ac.uk/about/-/...

You mean this CRU data? The scientists you're (still) accusing were cleared long ago by no less than eight independent investigations, yet you still want us to believe your baseless conspiracy twaddle.

First, let's see you show real evidence - actual, peer-reviewed studies - that conclusively prove the globe is not warming. Then we can address any questions about how decades of data from scientific organisations in a dozen countries could somehow show that it is. Pretending data you don't like must be wrong while producing none of your own is the literal definition of denial.

It's very hard to take seriously all your baseless accusations of conspiracy, when the whole denial camp still can't even prove the climatologists are wrong!

I await your scientifically based paper that says that 89% of data collection stations aren't positioned right.

Too late for this tactics. Your fellow alarmists have already accepted the figure — and tried to defend their colleague's incompetence with the "weighting" and "adjusting".

All that was not kept was the CRU's copies of that data.

I hate to ask this cliche question, but "Are you stupid or a liar?" CRU have already admitted losing the data — irretrievably.

This may not prove that they are cooks, but your continuing attempts to deny it certainly makes you look incomplete...

I've already given you a couple of examples several time [...] Someone with a lawyer's mindset like you insists the forms be followed.

Gee, you keep calling me "a lawyer" instead of simply posting in the — perfectly reasonable — format I requested.

Besides, are lawyers really bad? I don't see you objecting, when they are used to prosecute "denialiasts" — First Amendment be damned...

By my calculations the sea level rise from 1990 to the start of 2016 is around 80 mm, clearly greater than the projections from the IPCC in 2001.

Seriously? Do you even realize, what you posted? The "prediction" you cited is waay off — according to you! 80 mm instead of the predicted 50-60... What a way to prove validity of a scientific theory!

And it exposes a thing about you and yours — you seek not truth, but a confirmation for your pre-conceived notions. That is why you made this very blunder.

For you a good scientific study is one, that confirms global warming — preferably anthropogenic. It is your primary (if not the sole) criteria. You are no scientist today — even if you ever were...

And then I can not help but notice, that you chose to ignore my question about whether or not you have (less articulate?) collaborators here, who leave the arguing to you while modding me down and you — up. Such question-dodging confirms my suspicions — I'm dealing with a cabal. Whether you are tightly organized or loosely collaborating, I find myself bare-knuckled in a gunfight...

Zero hard numbers and not a single fucking citation. Whoever modded this up shouldn't have mod points.

What? That's exactly what we're talking about: the lack of hard numbers. The HUGE lack of hard numbers, so much so that huge swaths of areas now being accurately measured are being pointlessly compared to pre-industrial circumstances completely lacking hard data from those same places. Why are you looking for a citation? OF COURSE THERE'S NO CITATION. This is all about the lack of such, which is why proclaiming down-to-the-degree comparisons is so ridiculous.

It's right here you stupid ignorant denialist shill! What is your motive here?

The funding for the CRU, Climatic Research Unit, at the University of East Anglica has a fair amount of Big-Oil/Big-Energy Funding

British Council, British Petroleum, Broom's Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, Central Electricity Generating Board, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), Commercial Union, Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU), Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Department of Energy, Department of the Environment (DoE, 1970-1997), Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR, 1997-2001), Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA, 2001-present), Department of Energy and Climatic Change (DECC), Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Earth and Life Sciences Alliance, Eastern Electricity, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Greater London Authority, Greenpeace International, International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED), Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), National Assembly for Wales, National Power, National Rivers Authority, Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), Norwich Union, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Overseas Development Administration (ODA), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates, Royal Society, Scientific Consultants, Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, Shell, SQW Consulting, Stockholm Environment Agency, Sultanate of Oman, Tate and Lyle, Tyndall Centre, UK Met. Office, UK Nirex Ltd., UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR), United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP), United States Department of Energy, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) History of the Climatic Research Unit

References

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers, p. 5 (the 5th AR is published)

B.D. Santer et.al., “A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere,” Nature vol 382, 4 July 1996, 39-46

Gabriele C. Hegerl, “Detecting Greenhouse-Gas-Induced Climate Change with an Optimal Fingerprint Method,” Journal of Climate, v. 9, October 1996, 2281-2306

V. Ramaswamy et.al., “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling,” Science 311 (24 February 2006), 1138-1141

B.D. Santer et.al., “Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes,” Science vol. 301 (25 July 2003), 479-483.

In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first speculated that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.

National Research Council (NRC), 2006. Surface Temperature Reconstructions For the Last 2,000 Years. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

Church, J. A. and N.J. White (2006), A 20th century acceleration in global sea level rise, Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L01602, doi:10.1029/2005GL024826.

The global sea level estimate described in this work can be downloaded from the CSIRO website.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/cl... anomalies/index.html

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/d...

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...

T.C. Peterson et.al., "State of the Climate in 2008," Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, v. 90, no. 8, August 2009, pp. S17-S18.

I. Allison et.al., The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science, UNSW Climate Change Research Center, Sydney, Australia, 2009, p. 11

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea...

http://science.nasa.gov/headli... 01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm

Levitus, et al, "Global ocean heat content 1955–2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems," Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L07608 (2009).

L. Polyak, et.al., “History of Sea Ice in the Arctic,” in Past Climate Variability and Change in the Arctic and at High Latitudes, U.S. Geological Survey, Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.2, January 2009, chapter 7

R. Kwok and D. A. Rothrock, “Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESAT records: 1958-2008,” Geophysical Research Letters, v. 36, paper no. L15501, 2009

http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice....

National Snow and Ice Data Center

World Glacier Monitoring Service

I find you quite arrogant and condescending.

So, basically, you consider it condescending that I insist that you should actually look at data. Real data. Not blog posts.

And you complain that I only gave you a link to one source of data. OK, here are data from four continents:

Berkeley Earth: http://berkeleyearth.org/
Hadley Center Climate Research Unit: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/d...
Goddard Institute for Space Studies: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
Japanese Meteorological Agency: http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/t...
Australian Meteorological Agency: http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of...
NOAA: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/t...

HadCRUT goes back a little further, 1850:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT4.pdf

There aren't sufficient historical records to go back much further with direct measurement. You have to start relying on proxies, like tree measurements and ice cores.

Start here: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#datdow

Actually, you'll probably need to start with at least one college degree in meteorology or climatology.
Or, in other words, the raw data is meaningless to a non-expert in the field.

We are guided by consensus a thousand ways every single day,
but it's only climate science where people seem to get bent out of shape.

People would be in a better position to evaluate this stuff if a large chunk of the studies and papers interpreting the raw data weren't locked behind paywalls

I've never considered myself a "denier", and yet every time I ask someone to point to the evidence, I hear that slur tossed out. I've only briefly attempted to search for evidence online, and had virtually no success except to find things like the 97% consensus page at NASA's site. So, if anyone here has better sources, I'm all "ears".

Start here: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#datdow

Actually, you'll probably need to start with at least one college degree in meteorology or climatology.
Or, in other words, the raw data is meaningless to a non-expert in the field.

We are guided by consensus a thousand ways every single day,
but it's only climate science where people seem to get bent out of shape.

Australian is a net CO2 sink, and the globe hasn't warmed for almost 18 years anyway; so I don't understant your point. Another thing is that conspiracy theorists amongst those you call denialist has been very throughly debunked, in fact 100% of "denialist" agree that man has caused some warming due to CO2 vs. 97% of Warmist agree with that statement! And before you go all conspiracy theorist about "Big Oil/Coal Shills" the CRU gets considerable funding from evil "Big Oil/Coal".

It's been pointed out that climate scientists () are often not very good at getting the statistics right.

How stupid is it that we have regulations based on data that's isn't made available for independent verification?

Almost all of it is in fact available, so this is just more GOP BS.

A small part of it is under copyright protection or other NDA -- and that's dumb, and the cure is copyright reform that frees all publicly funded research, and a research funding process that doesn't rely on making researchers cover costs by selling their data. Copyright corrupts science. But Congress isn't doing that, and we can't make other countries do it.

As the University of East Anglias CRU explains,

Since the early 1980s, some NMSs, other organizations and individual scientists have given or sold us (see Hulme, 1994, for a summary of European data collection efforts) additional data for inclusion in the gridded datasets, often on the understanding that the data are only used for academic purposes with the full permission of the NMSs, organizations and scientists and the original station data are not passed onto third parties. Below we list the agreements that we still hold....Some date back at least 20 years. Additional agreements are unwritten and relate to partnerships we've made with scientists around the world and visitors to the CRU over this period. In some of the examples given, it can be clearly seen that our requests for data from NMSs have always stated that we would not make the data available to third parties....The inability of some agencies to release climate data held is not uncommon in climate science. The Dutch Met Service (KNMI) run the European Climate Assessment and Dataset (ECA&D, http://eca.knmi.nl/) project. They are able to use much data in their numerous analyses, but they cannot make all the original daily station temperature and precipitation series available because of restrictions imposed by some of the data providers...The problem is a generic issue and arises from the need of many NMSs to be or aim to be cost neutral (i.e. sell the data to recoup the costs of making observations and preparing the data).

We receive numerous requests for these station data...These data are not ours to provide without the full permission of the relevant NMSs, organizations and scientists.

And some of the data has been lost to bit rot, like a lot of computer data from decades ago. No surprise.

But the idea that there's some dark secret that a cabal of climate scientists are hiding is the usual denialist gibberish.

It's almost like scientists have been saying global warming is coming for 40 years now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science#Scientists_increasingly_predict_warming.2C_1970s

Even though it has.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

That's a straw-man. A really great straw-man, but a straw-man nevertheless.

Repeat: access to the RAW DATA was NOT available. Only data that has already been "massaged" (to an unknown degree) was available before the "official" release, and that release was prompted by complaints about this very (and very valid) issue.

July 2011, and 5,113 weather stations, to be more precice, in that particular release. Even then, some countries were holding out. (Most notably Poland.)

Whether the Muir-Russel review managed to come up with similar results is irrelevant to the point being discussed here: the fact that access to original data is vital to verifying and reproducing results.

The fact that results might have been reproduced in one (or however many) cases makes no difference to that point whatever.

"We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data."

Source: www.cru.uea.ac.uk

And for my masters thesis in 2000 I worked on a thing called TESSA. Specifically my part was on the compression algorithm that reduced the data points for the sign language half from 15 dimensions (1 dimension for each joint in the fingers and thumb) down to 3 dimensions as computing power was too limited back then to deal with any more in real time. In the end I used a combination of hidden Markov models and active shape models to do this. Was really interesting stuff.

So, you bring up two different questions; I will try to respond to both, one at a time.

First, there is Hans von Storch's interview with Der Spiegel.

Hans von Storch is a German climate scientist. As far as being "the lead author" of "the IPCC report" is concerned, I'm not really sure which report you are referring to. Each of the 11 chapters of IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (the most recent one) has around ten or more lead authors, and as far as I can tell Storch isn't among them. He isn't even among the even larger group of contributing authors. Nevertheless, as a climate scientist who has been in the field for a long time, he raises some valid points.

Storch is discussing temperature data from the last 15 years (not 20 as you first said -- when he mentions 20 years, he is talking about the hypothetical scenario that the current trend would continue for another 5 years, and what that could mean).

Essentially, his point is that we are currently observing a slower increase in surface temperature than many of the models had predicted. While we are certainly talking about a rather short time period on a geological time scale, the models used by Storch's team indicate that these observations are unlikely to have occurred through random fluctuations. Hence, he concludes there is probably something going on that hasn't been modelled properly.

At the same time as we are seeing this reduced increase in surface temperatures, other climatological changes, such as rising sea levels and ocean water temperatures, have carried on.

Based on measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation, it has also been observed that the Earth absorbed more net energy between 2004 and 2008 than surface temperatures would suggest. This has led researchers to wonder where this energy has gone.

One suggested explanation is that heat is being transferred to deep ocean water, to a greater extent than previously anticipated. (Since water has a very high heat capacity, the oceans can buffer a significant portion of the thermal energy.) A recent study by Balmaseda, Trenberth and Källén concludes that this is in fact happening, and that it is the result of certain weather phenomena in recent years, such as El Niño.

In fact, Storch brings the heating ocean water explanation up himself, further down in the same interview.

The thing is though, if increased heat transfer to deep ocean water is happening, it doesn't actually change our long-term fate. Deep ocean water is expected to heat as we reach a new thermal equilibrium, just not this early. In other words, assuming this theory proves to hold water (no pun intended), the end result is the probably more ro less the same; things just heat up in a slightly different order.

Throwing CO2 out of the equation, on the other hand, isn't really anywhere on the map. It would immediately make historical data inexplicable and put into question a lot of fundamental physics. And nor is Storch suggesting any such thing. What we can hope for is that the Earth's sensitivity to CO2 forcing has been overestimated somewhat -- that could make the soon hopelessly out of reach maximum 2 degrees warming target perhaps more attainable.

All in all, I think it would be fair to say that the jury is still out on exactly how the recent apparent stagnation in surface temperature increases should be interpreted. We should not get carried away. No doubt, the coming few years will shed light on the issue. Additionally, it's not exactly like the current pace of climate negotiations will get around to doing

As far as I know most temperature proxies are done by the individual researchers and most of them are not associated with the CRU.

What did I say? "Handled, aggregated, and interpreted". I didn't say "done by". They aren't famous for researching and measuring temperature proxies (though their researchers do a bit of this), but rather for accumulating them into aggregate climate reconstructions.

Do you have any evidence that "most such temperature proxies have been handled, aggregated, interpreted by the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia" or is that just your biased opinion?

They have 150 years of instrumental measurements of surface temperatures. This is the primary link between modern climate observations and pre-industrial temperature proxies. Many climatologists still refer to standard CRU paleoclimate reconstructions like the Hadley Center/CRU series when calibrating their own temperature proxies or discussing climate phenomena in the industrial to modern period.

In addition, they have aggregated extensive collections of paleoclimate data.

In addition, this data has been processed and interpreted. There are an absurd degree of vagaries in how, when, and where the original data was collected. Various undesirable defects such as the urban heat island effect or local issues (permanent moving of weather stations from one location to a nearby but somewhat different location) can distort long temperature records.

These records are incorporated into a lot of research, for example, the famous Mann et al "hockey stick" paper which used "the collection of annual resolution dendroclimatic[eg, tree ring], ice core, ice melt, and long historical records used by Bradley and Jones" (Jones being the head of the CRU) and "Monthly instrumental land air and sea surface temperature grid-point data (Fig. 1b) from the period 1902-95" which also was provided by the same authors as before.

Here, both most of the pre-industrial records and the industrial era records were provided by CRU sources.

IPCC has often quoted such data sets and has CRU researchers on some of their committees.

There's a great deal of genuine complexity and nonuniformity in the data that the CRU collects. What they do has to be done in order to use this data effectively. But the point behind my original remark is that any bias in how the CRU does this work would affect a great deal of research and derivative models. I think it's actually happened, but YMMV. They are gatekeepers for significant parts of climatology and I think it's poor science to discount that risk.

Alternately, if you actually read those emails then you should be armed with precise quotes of the "deceptions and manipulations" which you found so powerfully convincing, or at least have some mental construct of their findings to provide us, rather than just a brief handwave in their direction preparatory to an ad hominem slur devoid of substantive content.

As, for instance, these quotes from 7 unrelated investigations which I find convincing:

"even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified."
-"The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia" http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387i.pdf

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal. "
- "Report of the International Panel set up by the University of East Anglia to examine the research of the Climatic Research Unit." http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/SAP

"Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."
- "Final Investigation Report Involving Dr. Michael E. Mann" http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf

"On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. ... In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policy makers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."
- "The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review" http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

"Petitioners say that emails disclosed from CRU provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate data. The media coverage after the emails were released was based on email statements quoted out of context and on unsubstantiated theories of conspiracy. The CRU emails do not show either that the science is flawed or that the scientific process has been compromised. EPA carefully reviewed the CRU emails and found no indication of improper data manipulation or misrepresentation of results."
- "Myths vs. Facts: Denial of Petitions for Reconsideration of the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act" http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/myths-facts.html

"In our review of the CRU emails, we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data comprising the GHCN-M dataset or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures. In addition, we found no evidence to suggest that NOAA was non-compliant with the IQA or the Shelby Amendment. "
- "Examination of issues related to internet posting of emails from Climatic Research Unit" http://www.oig.doc.g

Oh look, I found an interesting discussion about that very post from John Christy of UAH, posted on notorious denier Roger Pielke Jr's blog. The great thing about blogs as compared to scientific journals is that you get to choose your "pal review"! Who will notice if you mis–represent the original data, and use a flawed dataset?

One comment really nails it, and I can't link to it individually, so I'll just include it here:

The first thing I noticed when looking at Christy’s graph was that Hansen’s scenario B had been replotted to make it appear that it tracks scenario A very closely. It doesn’t, it never has. The graph on Real Climate uses the original data http://www.realclimate.org/images/Hansen

The next thing that was obvious was that the RSS and UAH temperature graph shows very little warming. I thought this issue was supposed to have been rectified after Spencer and Christy corrected the errors relating to orbital drift (meaning the temps were taken at progressively later times each day).

After making the corrections (version 5.2) the data now correlates with other global temperature records such as those of NASA and the CRU (remember when the skeptics always relied on the RSS / UAH temperature records, until it came to light that it was wrong).
Detail - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu
Summary - http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_descrip
UAH Data - http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2l
RSS Data - http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2l
Comparison Data - http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temper
Hansen’s Data - http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988

It appears that Christy has chosen to use the old data in his comparison. In effect, what he’s done is to exaggerate the warming predicted in Hansen’s Scenario B (the one Hansen always said was most likely) and then downplay the true amount of warming that has occurred.

When the real data are used it becomes apparent how accurate Hansen’s scenario B projections have actually been – not exact but pretty close. Considering Jim’s 1988 projections were based on single inputs then this is quite impressive.

Name one that has come true, if you can.

"The world will get warmer."

Proof: Domingues 2008, Nuccitelli 2012, NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, Hadley Centre, and BEST 2011 (preliminary).

The problem with that graph is that the time scale used is far too small. The line of best fit would have shown a downward trend in 3-4 times before present, it is only later values that pull it up. If not for the huge peak between 1995 and 2000, the trend line would still be going up!

If you expand the graph you see a much different picture. Clearly the temperature is rising quickly right? Well who is to say that this graph is any better at predicting the future than yours?

I would also point out the IPCC predictions are based on decade averages. So saying that it doesn't work because they estimated too high this year, is like saying they were wrong because they estimated too low 1998.

Bullshit,

Acknowledgements

This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order):
British Council, British Petroleum, Broom's Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre, Central Electricity Generating Board, Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), Commercial Union, Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU), Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), Department of Energy, Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA), Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Eastern Electricity, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Environment Agency, Forestry Commission, Greenpeace International, International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED), Irish Electricity Supply Board, KFA Germany, Leverhulme Trust, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), National Power, National Rivers Authority, Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), Norwich Union, Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Overseas Development Administration (ODA), Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates, Royal Society, Scientific Consultants, Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research, Shell, Stockholm Environment Agency, Sultanate of Oman, Tate and Lyle, UK Met. Office, UK Nirex Ltd., United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP), United States Department of Energy, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF). History of the Climatic Research Unit

the CRU is definitely AGW research and British Petroleum, Shell and Sultanate of Oman are definitely Big Oil.

"The oil companies" have been sponsoring AGW research for many years. Don't fall for popular myths, verify facts yourself.

This list is not fully exhaustive, but we would like to acknowledge the support of the following funders (in alphabetical order):

British Petroleum, Department of Energy, National Power, Shell, Sultanate of Oman, United States Department of Energy

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/

Bad Astronomer: Climategate 2: More ado about nothing. Again.

Finally got this comment through the filter after removing MANY of the links.

In a field where all you really have are climate data and computer models, refusing to share them with the world is akin to a physicist claiming that he’s invented Cold Fusion, but refusing to show exactly how (except perhaps to a couple of his friends). Gavin of course defended him saying that while maybe THEIR data wasn’t available, HIS data was available, and so that made it all better. (Which it didn’t – it rather just highlighted their shady behavior). ... [ShakaUVM]

Gavin wasn't just saying that other data was available, he was saying that CRU doesn't do any primary data collection:

... Claims that data has been destroyed or lost are untrue. Claims that there is no access to the raw temperature data are untrue. There is nothing in any of the CRU archives that is particularly special or noteworthy and that isn't mostly available to anyone already via NOAA. ... [Gavin Schmidt]

... If you want the very original hand-written records from individual stations, ask the National Met. Service in the relevant country, not the people who collate the homogenised records for use in tracking climate change. [Gavin Schmidt]

The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. [Gavin Schmidt]

No data has been destroyed, the original files and numbers are with the national weather services that provided them. Removing a copy of a original file because it is not useful for my purposes is not 'deleting data' [Gavin Schmidt]

The raw data is the GHCN data (v2.mean.Z) (publicly available, as has been the case for decades). [Gavin Schmidt]

Unsurprisingly, that's also what the reviews said:

The Unit does virtually no primary data acquisition but has used data from published archives and has collaborated with people who have collected data. ... [Oxburgh panel, p2]

The CRU dataset, which forms the land surface component of the HadCRUT global temperature record, was compiled with the aim of comprehensiveness. The majority of the data in it are derived from the same freely-available raw data sets used by NOAA and NASA. ... [UK House of Commons Inquiry, p13]

Any independent researcher may freely obtain the primary station data. It is impossible for a third party to withhold access to the data. ... Regarding data availability, there is no basis for the allegations that CRU prevented access to raw data. It was impossible for them to have done so. [Muir Russell Review, p48,53]

Somehow, you managed to twist the fact that it was impossible for CRU to prevent access to the raw data into a

"The climategate scandal was really about climatologists hiding their data and methods from critical review."

I suppose you're going to tell me that the three independent inquries that exonerated Jones and the CRU (including the CRU investigation headed by the ex-chairman of Shell) were a whitewash. Look closely at the third one where it describes how the investigators were able to obtain the "hiden data" from public sources within two days. If you still belive the CRU was hiding anything after the thourough debunking of those claims then you haven't been paying attention.

Great post!

"After reading publications and interviewing the senior staff of CRU in depth, we are satisfied that the CRU tree-ring work has been carried out with integrity, and that allegations of deliberate misrepresentation and unjustified selection of data are not valid." - Oxborgh report.

The Penn state inquiry does not directly address tree rings.

The Muir report, (why wasn't it linked in TFS?), says - "We have seen no evidence to sustain a charge of impropriety on the part of CRU staff (or the many other authors) in respect of selecting the reconstructions in AR4 Chapter 6. [snip] We find that divergence is well acknowledged in the literature, including CRU papers."

You mean like

British Council,
  British Petroleum,
  Broom's Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre,
  Central Electricity Generating Board,
  Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS),
  Commercial Union,
  Commission of European Communities (CEC, often referred to now as EU),
  Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC),
  Department of Energy,
  Department of the Environment (DETR, now DEFRA),
  Department of Health,
  Department of Trade and Industry (DTI),
  Eastern Electricity,
  Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC),
  Environment Agency,
  Forestry Commission,
  Greenpeace International,
  International Institute of Environmental Development (IIED),
  Irish Electricity Supply Board,
  KFA Germany,
  Leverhulme Trust,
  Ministry of Agriculture,
  Fisheries and Food (MAFF),
  National Power,
  National Rivers Authority,
  Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC),
  Norwich Union,
  Nuclear Installations Inspectorate,
  Overseas Development Administration (ODA),
  Reinsurance Underwriters and Syndicates,
  Royal Society,
  Scientific Consultants,
  Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC),
  Scottish and Northern Ireland Forum for Environmental Research,
  Shell,
  Stockholm Environment Agency,
  Sultanate of Oman,
  Tate and Lyle,
  UK Met. Office,
  UK Nirex Ltd.,
  United Nations Environment Plan (UNEP),
  United States Department of Energy,
  United States Environmental Protection Agency,
  Wolfson Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).
History of the Climatic Research Unit

if excepting money from Big-Oil or Big-Energy taints you, the the CRU is tainted.

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's an orthogonality problem. If you have a Medieval Warming Period (MWP) -- then temperatures *aren't* unprecedented and become mathematically decoupled from CO2. Mann's "Hockeystick" graph erased the MWP -- problem is, the approach is worthless, and while Mann may believe it (again not conspiracy theory), it isn't true. Thus we still have the MWP (and the RWP, the Minoan, and the Holocene optimum) -- all of which were warmer than today and none of which had AGW contributions.

Well, yeah! The Medieval Warm Period, which was probably local, and restricted to Europe, but with a lower global average temperature... You could at least try to read a bit before spouting talking points...

A challenge to the geeks at slashdot -- read "HARRY_README.txt". If you believe a single thing that comes out of CRU after that, I've got a bridge to sell.

Though you haven't actually linked it, I'll try to answer.

First, let RealClimate speak (scroll down a little)...

HARRY_read_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the documentation, metadata and databases associated with the legacy CRU TS 2.1 product, which is not the same as the HadCRUT data (see Mitchell and Jones, 2003 for details). The CSU TS 3.0 is available now (via ClimateExplorer for instance), and so presumably the database problems got fixed. Anyone who has ever worked on constructing a database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory and inconsistently formatted datasets will share his evident frustration with how tedious that can be.

Second, how is this any different from major, even mission critical code in so many other domains? Even in places which could cost thousands of lives (nuclear reactor safety systems, for example... Ever done a code audit on the software for those safety systems)?

Keep in mind that these people aren't professional coders; they're scientists using IDL and Fortran (90, I presume), and probably other languages like Matlab. The code is an implementation of their hypothesis. It's usually ugly, and the first one that works the way they want it. Maintainability? Hah! (note: here, I speak as one who has had to translate "scientist" code into "real" code).

Spouting talking points is hardly critical thinking, which is why you people are called "deniers" and not "skeptics".

No data was destroyed. A small part of a local copy of some data was deleted. The original data still exists

Yes, the data was destroyed and the originals no longer exist. See:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

Now, whether or not this was incompetence or malfeasance could be an open question.

What makes you think the original data still exists when Phil Jones himself testified that they only had the "value-added" data, since losing the original data in the 80s?

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/availability/

"We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added data."

• Penn State
• the British Parliamentary inquiry
• the Oxford panel
• Nature.com

That's why the head of the CRU at UAE resigned his post.

Nope. Phil Jones is still the director of the CRU. source. For a time, he had stepped aside, but that's standard practice during witchhunts.

Here is the raw data, now will you please stop linking tabloid hit pieces and repeating their propoganda?

Note the raw data in the link has a few minor holes, this is due to the fact some national weather services (eg: France) will only release their data on condition you keep it private. If you intend to perform a reconstruction be aware the raw data is chock full of anaomolies such as undocumented station movements and typos. OTHOH Jones and his unit have spent the last couple of decades ferreting out and documenting these anomolies so you may want to consider using the more complete and more accurate HadCRUT data set or NASA's similarly painstakingly cleaned GISTemp data set.

As you may or may not be aware historical temprature reconstructions are fairly insensitive to the holes and anomolies mentioned above, meaning that the raw data in the link is more than sufficient to reproduce any of the historical temprature reconstructions in the literature. If this is still insuffitient to shake your faith in tabloid journalisim, you could try some of the other raw data and master repositiries.

Nope, 85%. Also, this might be the debate she was talking about. I tend to agree with CapitalistImperialistPig: dendrochronology seems kind of spooky. Research involving living matter just strikes me as softer and somehow ickier than "pure" physics like boreholes, ice cores, instrumental records, etc. For instance, the divergence after 1960 makes me uncomfortable, but mainly because I don't know much about it. I also don't know how many cores are "enough" for reliable temperature reconstruction (even aside from all the other considerations), and the thought of taking enough time to try to understand that question makes me shiver. I'm comfortable relegating tree ring data to the status of "supporting evidence" which happens to correlate well (before 1960) with other proxies.

Here and here. Have fun storming the castle.

Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

That's not what he said. Dr. Jones said that the 15 year period since 1995 was too short to see a verifiable warming trend. It's a simple statistical concept; we need more data. His response to the Guardian article makes this plain.

UN climate body admits 'mistake' on Himalayan glaciers

Yes, there is a single mistaken number on page 493 of Volume 2 in the IPCC report. It's probably best if you instead focus on the well regarded, well sourced, 45 page section on glacial melting in Volume 1.

Climate change skeptics are like Ghost Hunters; whenever they hear a stair squeak, they leap to the assumption that there's a body nearby.

Obligatory xkcd ref.

Well, if you want to disregard what the Wegman Report says, that's up to you.

The cheaper ones tend to report *cooler* temperatures than the more expensive, standalone sensors. So the "urban" stations actually show *less* global warming if averaged in a naive approach.

This is only true if there are no adjustments made to the temperature reading AND the "cooler" temperature is greater than the heating effect. If these aren't true, then obviously it would depend on the amount of the adjustment and amount of error in the reading.

2) There's a *lot* more than 4 stations in most regions which have correlated temperature anomalies. In the US, generally dozens.

You know very well that the # wasn't significant in the argument. It's fine to eliminate grossly incorrect readings this way. It's another thing entirely to adjust a good reading because the surrounding stations have more error.

3) The heat island effect *is* cancelled algorithmically, and this is verified by, among other things, comparing calm and windy days.

You have a remarkable confidence that this algorithm is very accurate. You can read the conclusion of here and see there are reasons to believe there are deficiencies in the algorithm. Even comparing calm/windy days will be influenced by the location of the unit (walls close by) and topological influences.

For something that is supposedly "validated", we are seeing an awful lot of instances of incorrect usage.

Yes, by people like Watts.

Proof by Innuendo. There's science for you. Are you actually trying to argue that algorithms are better than calibration?

1) This, this, and this.

er, ok. These graphs tell me the world is warmer than it was than the Little Ice Age. If you assume all this is due to CO2 (ie there is no solar forcing), one would expect and .2-.5degC if the CO2 level reached 2x pre-industrial levels (560ppm) assuming this guy did his math right.

2) Since when do you trust Phil Jones?

I don't trust EITHER side in this debate. I note that it is more significant if a proponent of AGW says there's no warming just as if a detractor of AGW says that there is warming.

3) Phil Jones is one climate scientist among several thousand. He is not the god of climate science.

Please. Saying he's just one climate scientist is like saying Joe Biden is just another government employee. It's being disingenuous. It would be much more difficult to make the AGW case if you took his work out of the picture.

4) Wrong. Jones says that there is a +0.12C warming trend for that time, but it's not long enough to be statistically significant. And he's right.

Sorry. I stand corrected. It was for the period Jan 2002-present with the -.12C.

It's idiotic how so many people keep trying to read trends into a couple years of extremely noisy data.

I have NO idea what YOU consider a trend when I wrote the question which is why I asked. Forgive me for not being psychic. Jones uses the word "trend" to talk about Jan 2002- (see question C)

What is your point? That a meteorologist or a computer programmer cannot in any circumstances prove a climatologist wrong? They can't say the the use of statistics in the model is flawed, or there is a coding error in the model? I didn't realize that climatologists were born perfect.

Obligatory xkcd ref.

This is one of the dumber statements I've seen in this discussion. Suppose you have 4 stations in a geographic area. 2 are out in the middle of fields way away from any development (and been this way for the last 80+ years) and 2 right next to human development. Do you not see a) which two (all other things being equal) of the 4 stations are going to give you better temperature data b) what the net effect of deleting/algorithmically adjusting the data from the data from the fields is going to be?

1) Here's where naive approaches like yours fail. The stations out in the middle of fields tend to be different, more expensive kinds of sensors than the ones close to human settlement. The cheaper ones tend to report *cooler* temperatures than the more expensive, standalone sensors. So the "urban" stations actually show *less* global warming if averaged in a naive approach.

2) There's a *lot* more than 4 stations in most regions which have correlated temperature anomalies. In the US, generally dozens.

3) The heat island effect *is* cancelled algorithmically, and this is verified by, among other things, comparing calm and windy days.

For something that is supposedly "validated", we are seeing an awful lot of instances of incorrect usage.

Yes, by people like Watts.

What "trends" are you talking about? Like the trend line of 1995-2009 (-0.12C per decade - yes, that's a minus - from Phil Jones no less)? Or are you talking about the one since 1850?

1) This, this, and this.

2) Since when do you trust Phil Jones?

3) Phil Jones is one climate scientist among several thousand. He is not the god of climate science.

4) Wrong. Jones says that there is a +0.12C warming trend for that time, but it's not long enough to be statistically significant. And he's right. It's idiotic how so many people keep trying to read trends into a couple years of extremely noisy data. El Nino in particular adds a *lot* of short-term noise. The "-0.12 trend" is for 2002 to present, which is an even shorter time period and even less statistically significant -- as Jones points out.

Are you saying a station next to a heat pump discharge is going to give you accurate readings?

1) Which is why you *algorithmically eliminiate bad stations*. The problem is that you criticize them when you think that they're using said stations, but also criticize them when they mathematically eliminate them. It's a no-win situation that you're trying to put them in.

2) The "bad" stations tend to show *less* warming than the good stations. So "whoops" on your part.

you do not think the urban heat island effect is real?

1) The urban heat island effect is algorithmically cancelled, and the cancellation verified by, among other things, comparing windy days to calm days.

2) There exists a closely monitored "reference network" for a reason, you know.

This is a truly sweet link. Thanks for it. This was not a friendly interview.

Maxume's comment notwithstanding, he is truly throwing AGW under the bus. "Warming since 1950" includes the periods 1950-1995 (some warming) and 1995-present (he admits no warming at all). Admits doubt about local nature of Midieval Warm Period. Admits measurement challenges and sensitivity of instruments.

His response to the Yamal question was particularly interesting. Rather than respond to the question he referred to the Briffa paper here. Look closely and you'll find that the maximum number of trees is about 77. Even if a tree were equivalent to a NIST calibrated platinum thermocouple, 75 trees is not enough measurement points in that vast area. Demotes interpretation of Yamal data from "proved science" to "I believe it's sound".

And then the killer quote:

N - When scientists say "the debate on climate change is over", what exactly do they mean - and what don't they mean?

It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

There you go. Phil Jones doesn't think the debate on climate change is over - even for the instrumental measurements and especially for the palaeoclimatic. And then there's the "independent review" mentioned several times:

T - Where do you draw the line on the handling of data? What is at odds with acceptable scientific practice? Do you accept that you crossed the line?

This is a matter for the independent review.

That's shorthand for "I can't talk about that." There are several of these. And then a sweet, sweet close:

W - Finally, a personal question: Do you expect to return as director of the Climatic Research Unit? What is next for you?

This question is not for me to answer.

Because that's exactly what the CRU data is: mystical mumbo-jumbo.

Just because you're too stupid to read how the data is processed or compare it to what naive processing would yield... oh who the f*** am I kidding? Yes, it's mystical mumbo-jumbo. They're just trying to make the lightning-power that walks through wires into your house and runs your picture box and your clickety email machine cost more. CARBON GOOD!

Maybe he can get a job at the Climatic Research Unit.......I hear they're looking for a new director. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/

1. Answered by CRU already:

The Climatic Research Unit holds many data series, provided to the Unit over a period of several decades, from a number of nationally-funded institutions and other research organisations around the world, with specific agreements made over restrictions in the dissemination of those original data. All of these individual series have been used in CRU’s analyses. It is a time-consuming process to attempt to gain approval from these organisations to release the data. Since some of them were provided decades ago, it has sometimes been necessary to track down the successors of the original organisations. It is clearly in the public interest that these data are released once we have succeeded in gaining the approval of collaborators. Some who have requested the data will have been aware of the scale of the exercise we have had to undertake. Much of these data are already available from the websites of the Global Historical Climate Data Network and the Goddard Institute for Space Science.

2. It's unusually warm where I am, so AGW must be true by your logic.

3. This is called the divergence problem and is explained here and has been discussed on Slashdot before.

7. The Medieval Warming Period is not eliminated, just nuanced.

8. When you tell climate scientists they're wrong and you propose an alternative explanation, it's your job to prove the alternative. Climate scientists are busy proving their own stuff.

Over 95% of the CRU climate data set concerning land surface temperatures has been accessible to climate researchers, sceptics and the public for several years the University of East Anglia has confirmed.

"It is well known within the scientific community and particularly those who are sceptical of climate change that over 95% of the raw station data has been accessible through the Global Historical Climatology Network for several years. We are quite clearly not hiding information which seems to be the speculation on some blogs and by some media commentators," commented the University's Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research Enterprise and Engagement Professor Trevor Davies.

The University will make all the data accessible as soon as they are released from a range of non-publication agreements. Publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre.

The procedure for releasing these data, which are mainly owned by National Meteorological Services (NMSs) around the globe, is by direct contact between the permanent representatives of NMSs (in the UK the Met Office).

"We are grateful for the necessary support of the Met Office in requesting the permissions for releasing the information but understand that responses may take several months and that some countries may refuse permission due to the economic value of the data," continued Professor Davies.

The remaining data, to be published when permissions are given, generally cover areas of the world where there are fewer data collection stations.

"CRU's full data will be published in the interests of research transparency when we have the necessary agreements. It is worth reiterating that our conclusions correlate well to those of other scientists based on the separate data sets held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)," concluded Professor Davies.

We all know that if any of the petroleum-owned deniers could disprove a word of that, they would cite it explicitly and disprove as much as they could. Considering the combined financial resources of Exxon/Mobil, Texaco/Chevron and Koch Industries, everybody with a brain knows that the scientists are telling the truth and have been all along, and the data thieves are liars as well as thieves.

Is anybody here surprised that the thieves turned out to be dishonest?

This discussion is going nowhere :) I can just assume you're lying on purpose, although I don't understand why.

In this picture, as I posted before, the curves (note the colours) do not depict what the captions claim they depict.

It's as simple as that.

http://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.138392!imageManager/1009061939.jpg