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Russians Claim More Climate Data Was Manipulated
DustyShadow writes "On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) claimed that the Hadley Center for Climate Change had probably tampered with Russian-climate data. The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory. Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports. Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations. The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley CRU survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century."
Yeah, way to skip right over the actual allegation. Do their claims, in and of themselves, have merit? Wouldn't take long to find out.
I hate to break it to you but neither side has given me data. Saying so and so skipped over data from here and there does nothing for me when I can't see the data and do my own statistical analysis. If the IAE is so sure and has the data, why don't they publish the adjusted figures to show us just how much we were lied to?
No choice but to listen to those with the data publishing the reports. Does it suck? Yes. But oftentimes that's how studies with empirical data works--especially if it cost a lot of money to acquire that data. We're not talking about a repeatable experiment here to be verified in another lab. And for some reason, we're not demanding they open the sequencing data on the cancer gene we just accepted that story and we trusted those scientists. But suddenly it's about climate change therefor you're now all more qualified experts than those with the data. Why is that? What is it about climate change that suddenly everyone and their dog can tell you how wrong the scientists are?
Welcome to the "new science." Guess we better all just get used to it.
Grow up. Your faux apathy rhetoric is amusing after I listen to you accuse me of an ad hominem attack.
My work here is dung.
These Russian experts in particular have a history of opposing international climate treaties (based on flawed expert analysis, as determined by other experts in the linked paper below):
http://www.edf.org/documents/3978_Review_InstEcAn_09082004B.pdf
The problem with your assertion is that it is an appeal to authority type logical fallacy, in and of itself;
1) The scientists have the data, so 2) they must know more about the data than we do, so 3) we should trust them implicitly in their interpretations of that data.
This does not follow, because it totally ignores that the scientists with the data may have intrinsic bias, or even that they could be wrong. This is exactly why when you get a diagnosis from a doctor that says "Operate!", you get a second opinion.
The problem here, is exactly like you stated; The data to get the second opinion is not public. Unlike the patient who may need an operation, who's body is the evidence, and is available on demand for inspection by the doctor giving the second opinion, all the potentially qualified persons to give a respectable response to this question are blocked out because of finanical interests on the data.
Essentially, we have the global climate change fear mongers on one side, shouting "OPERATE!" (through drastic slashing of manufacturing technologies, draconian cap and trade taxation, repossession of private property, and a whole host of other proceedures of questionable value), and on the other, you have the alternative medicine quack that says "The pain is all in your mind" (EG, the non-scientists that say that human released carbon dioxide has no impact on the environment whatsoever, in spite of the fact that this is not supported by even the slightest bit of chemical evidence.)
The patient (which is represented by the public in this case) is then left seeking a REAL second opinion; Are cap and trade&Co really necessary? The patient WANTS a *REAL* answer to that question, but is continually fed the PR pamphlets from both (disreputable) extremists.
I for one, want the data to be released publicly. This is especially true if the data was collected using public funds, such as through NOAA, or in this case, through the russian government and russian taxpayer money.
Right now, the patient is basically pleading with reputable doctors for a second opinion, but the doctors have to turn them away, because the medical history is "Confidential."
Stop trying to sound high and mighty about how fantabulously reputable the CRU scientists are, when you know damned well that scientists are people, and people are faulty.
The *ONLY* way to settle this, is to release the data. Given the far reaching implications of the decisions that will be reached through interpretation of this data, FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, I fail to see how the financial interests of the people who collected it can outweigh the invested interest of the rest of the whole world, who's economical and climatological futures hinge upon it.
If there is bad interpretation, and a misdiagnosis, sunshine will reveal it.
If not, Sunshine will also reveal it.
What we need is sunshine on the raw data; NOT specious arguments one way or the other on which side of the debate to "Simply Trust", when both have shown signs of being disreputable.
Okay, how's this for credibility: the Russians are believed to have been the ones who hacked into the servers and then selectively released out-of-context quotes to try to discredit the CRU scientists. So gee, should I act shocked that they're continuing their assault? Russia is being the number one impediment these days to a global climate change accord, and it seems to go to the top. For example, they've been one of the main forces holding up a Copenhagen accord.
Back on the initial topic: 100 to 1 odds says that any data exclusions are due to bad data and incomplete records. This is the standard sort of mistake made by people who either don't know how the analyses are done or who deliberately want to mislead. The meteorological station calculations are NOT done by simply taking all data and averaging it. If you did that, the way that the amateur deniers think that contaminated data would enter the record -- such as stations becoming urbanized, being tampered with, etc -- would actually be true. But the data is first analyzed, problem stations detected (in an automated method), and eliminated from the record or normalized. And the preprocessing is itself studied to verify that it's valid -- for example, comparing individual regions to other climate analysis methods, comparing windy days with calm days to make sure the heat island effect has been properly eliminated, etc.
In short, claiming that many stations are being eliminated is complete nonsense because that's *supposed* to happen, and if you didn't do that, the record would be readily thrown off by human development and equipment faults. I'd bet dollars to donuts that this is all that this comes down to. And that quite a few people at the agency putting this out know this, but are deliberately using it for manufactured doubt nonetheless.
And let's all not forget that the CRU dataset is just one dataset using one particular type of datasource and one particular analysis. There are many datasources and many analyses, and of equal prominence to CRU's datasets are NOAA's and NASA's. No, the different datasets don't match up perfectly (for example, whether 1998 or 2005 was the hottest year -- they were close), but the datasets all yield similar results.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
It's misinformation after misinformation. Almost all of the refusals to release data by the CRU come down to data shared by national weather services that they are contractually not *allowed* to share. Almost 100% of the data that they are allowed to share is publicly posted.
Now, there were a couple scientists who tried to find every excuse that they could not to share their particular data -- most notably, Phil Jones. But you only have to look at Jones' past to see why. He initially responded to all FOI requests -- including one by a financial trader named Douglas Keenan who fancied himself an amateur climate scientist (almost all of the professional climatologists are on one side of the issue, and its their ideological foes, generally people who don't know what they're doing, who are filing the requests). Keenan "discovered fraud" on the part of Jones's partner, Wei-Chyung Wang, and tried to get the FBI to arrest him. The university cleared Wang of all wrongdoing, but honestly, can you blame Jones for looking for any excuse not to have to deal with that again?
These are people who just want to work. They want to deal with litigious "amateur scientists" as much as they want a hole in their head.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
In short, the topic that people are making all of this hullabaloo about failed peer review. Meaning that there were errors found in it that prevented publication. And so what do they do? They turn to the press and hype it up three ways until sunday, hoping people won't notice or care that a peer-review board found the claims bogus. You're burying the lede, trying to allege some sort of peer-review conspiracy, when the reality is that all that says is that a peer review board found the claims as inaccurate/without merit.
Want an inconvenient fact about this article? The selection of stations is not done manually. It's done in an an automated process that has been analyzed by dozens of peer-reviewed papers. The selection process is designed to eliminate bogus or artificially trended data, such as from urbanization, damaged equipment, etc. What the IEA is basically damning them for is not including data that an automated, peer-reviewed process found was bogus.
You simply cannot automatically assume that all stations are good and valid. Because they're just plain not. Heck, normally the deniers themselves are the first ones to point this out.
And lastly, why are we even listening to a report from the "Institute for Energy Analysis" in the first place? Are we going to frontline reports from the Institute for Petroleum Research next?
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
Except there has been no evidence shown whatsoever that it was a hack. No computer logs, nada. Moreover, the fact that a BBC blogger was emailed the file and decided not to publish it weeks before it became available on the russian site seriously undermines the hacker theory. Not to mention the fact that everything is collated into a FOI folder.
This does not follow, because it totally ignores that the scientists with the data may have intrinsic bias, or even that they could be wrong. This is exactly why when you get a diagnosis from a doctor that says "Operate!", you get a second opinion.
One problem with this analogy is that it's not just one "doctor" that's saying "operate", it's thousands . How many more "second opinions" do you want before you accept that perhaps you actually need an operation? Are all those doctors quacks, every one of them?
I do agree the data should be public - and AFAIK there already are a great many public datasets, at NOAA and other places. You can gain access to more datasets once you exhibit certain basic qualifications (like a relevant degree). Just make sure you analyse a significant proportion of the data, and not just cherry-pick the bits that appear to agree with your conclusion, like so many deniers are guilty of.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I find it more interesting how the argument against climate change has been evolving.
First we have "there's no such thing as global warming"
Then it's "okay, there is global warming but it's not man-made"
Then it was "okay it is man-made but there's nothing we can do about it now"
THEN it was "Wait- it's a lie after all. This is all about MONEY. Climate change has no evidence behind it-- it's a massive collaborate scheme by those get-rich-quick green people. If by get-rich-quick you mean don't get particularly rich or quick, and of course the green titans of industry will have to wait 20+ years for their invented theory to persuade the majority of scientists in nearly every field from climatology to sociology-- I mean for them to be slowly recruited into the mass hoax. I certainly believe the poor oil industry establishment over those moneybag scientists.)
Now it's taken a real conspiracy twist: "Climategate!!!" followed by "The Telegraph quoted a russian free-market lobbying press-release!!"
Sorry, but when the truth threatens the profits and practices of major industries, we should just expect these obfuscation and lies. And ignore them.
(And yes, smoking really does cause cancer. That wasn't a hoax either.)
A number of problems with your argument:
1. Sea ice extent is not the same as sea ice volume. Extent measures surface area covered, but not the thickness. Survey of the thickness of the arctic sea ice (by both satellite and manually) have shown that the overall ice volume of the arctic is rapidly declining. See here for some data: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/seaice.html
2. Finally, given the amount of noise in the signal and the number of years it takes to make a statistical difference show up, it is impossible to make any determination of current trends using only a few years. Climate trends need to be taken over decades, not a few years. The shorter the time period, the more likely you are just measuring differences in weather and not necessarily climate.
We find no such thing. You are dishonestly stating things that are not in that linked e-mail at all. Dr. Jones points out that the problems in the Siberian data set are known and published about, and yet people keep submitting papers about it without referring to the existing literature. That's sloppy research, and he is right to recommend a rejection as a peer reviewer.
But don't take my word for it, here's the full text:
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Dump all their data on a website. Respond to FOI requests with a link. Any scientist that doesn't disclose their data SHOULD be viewed very skeptically; they're asking US to 'have faith'. That's not how science is supposed to work.
Yes, admitting the entirety of data into calculations of this scale would be foolish.
However, that is NOT what the Russian IEA is claiming Hadley Center did.
The 21-page PDF (http://www.iea.ru/article/kioto_order/15.12.2009.pdf) specifically explains how the English "scientists" discarded more-complete datasets in favor of less complete, used data from stations that were moved around (less reliable) and ignored stations that were, ahem, stationary, etc, etc.
So it's not a question of admitting all data & risking contamination - it's a question of intentionally choosing worse data when better data was available.
There's a translation of the "Conclusions" section of the PDF (can't blame the guy for not translating the entire document, it's a linguistic bitch). Not posting it here - too long - follow the link http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/16/iearussia-hadley-center-probably-tampered-with-russian-climate-data/ and search for "Posted Dec 17, 2009 at 2:44 AM".
So basically the data is incomplete, and you have to make guesses to fill it in. Oh, wait, I mean 'educated' guesses, since the only people you let guess are the ones whose guesses agree with yours.
If I want to become an expert on SQL, I go read the specs. If I want to become an expert on climatology, I go ask people to tell me how to guess which numbers will be useful to feed into the statistical analysis specs. I don't consider this crap as coming close to 'science'.