Monday
Feb062017
by 
Josh
Josh ClimateGate 2.0?
Feb 6, 2017 Climate: Curry David Rose GWPF Josh Just about everywhere.
Story at Judy Curry's, Mail on Sunday, GWPF, WUWT,and Twitter of course.
Update on Feb 6, 2017 by
Josh
Josh
Response to critiques: Climate scientists versus climate data by Judy Curry.
Instability of GHCN adjustment algorithm by Paul Matthews.
Science: One Damned Adjustment After Another? by Geoff Chambers
Reader Comments (270)
That ClimateGate 2.0 thing everyone was talking about a few days ago.
The three take away points from the John Bates revelations are:
1. Karl didn't follow the NOAA procedures for data handling. Without making a judgement as to whether he did or not, IF he did that is an egregious offence in engineering terms, It doesn't matter if the result is "right". In engineering the process is sacrosanct, and for very good reasons.I can quite see how people who haven't worked in an engineering environment would be wouldn't grasp the importance of quality control and be happy with slap dash work processes but, as Wegman said, Wrong Method + Right Answer = Bad Science
2. Karl decided that the ship temperatures were more accurate than the buoys. I haven't seen his reasoning for this judgement, but it doesn't take much thinking about to have the feeling that he could be totally wrong. He's saying that water extracted from the sea brought onto a ship and measured, presumably by eye, is more accurate than a buoy untouched by human hand? He, may, of course be right, but my bullshit meter is hard over on that one.
3. The GCHN software is unstable and produces different results with the same raw data input. Something that had been noted by blogger Paul Homewood here
If John Bates is right, and I have no reason to believe he isn't at this time, despite the unfunny bunny's assertion that he is disgruntled, then NOAA needs a clean out of its senior management, quality control must be at the heart of any organisation giving out information that will be used by governments to set policy and they have clearly failed to put it there.
Climate science theory appears to be a theory that cannot be wrong, and if the observations don't prove it right the entire community think it's the observations that are wrong and set about finding out why. Religion?
Ah. Good point, Gavin. I have no idea how old Mr Schmidt is (no, don’t bother; I am really not interesting in finding out…), but, having seen some pictures of him (such as when he ran away from the fear of a televised debate), he probably is younger than you (or me, for that matter). My own role on the ship is irrelevant; I just took umbrage at your slighting of the work of so many who tried to give the best results that they could in often difficult circumstances.
You might be a little brusque, but at least we agree that the idea of using such previously-dismissed observations, now, to validate present theories is absurd.
So, the claim of data manipulation in the head post is completely unfounded then. As the result of Karl 2015 has been confirmed by subsequent studies, clearly failing to follow all the many process steps recommended by Bates (if that is in fact what happened) is a distinction that makes no difference. Processes can always be improved.
Culture Clash at NOAA
The change that made a difference in the record and showed the 'pause' to be illusory was in fact the change from ERSST v3 to v4, which was basically putting into place the recommendations of a paper by Kennedy et al from 2011. Blaming Karl is seemingly a case of shoot the messenger.
The GCHN software is unstable and produces different results with the same raw data input.
That's incorrect. It gives different results with different input, that is, the addition of a day's new data can cause the pairwise adjustment algorithm to recalculate past temperatures, so-called 'fluttering'. The impact on the global estimates and trends is insignificant. There's a good analysis here..
Phil Clarke, no, your claims can not be trusted, and are unfounded. How do you feel about making presumptions?
NOAA are facing some cutbacks, why should they be trusted now?
PC
It's a little late to start presenting any rational case given your behaviour on the previous three pages, but you still don't seem to have grasped the main points in Judith Curry's analysis, and which, no doubt, are driving the US House Committee's interest (concern, even).
And whether the pause is real or not, or has ended or continues, this is unlikely to be resolved over the issue of proper manipulation of temperature data, but more by continued observations of temperature as the El Nina dissipates. Given the behaviour of the 1998 El Nina it seems unlikely that the pause has ended.
What presumptions? Who exactly is claiming that Karl or the NOAA improperly manipulated data and where is the evidence?
There was and is no pause, Jan temperatures up 0.15C.
https://moyhu.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/ncepncar-january-warmest-month-since.html
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1990/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1998/trend
As a BOMBSHELL, this looks a lot like a damp squib.
Science
Until quite recently, the pause was accepted, often with some embarrassment, but it was acknowledged; now, records seem to have been “homogenised” out of all recognition with reality, and we are expected to believe this?
Personally, I hope the slow warming continues, and we can enjoy many more mild winters. I do fear another winter like those of 1947, or 1963, or the early/mid 1980s, when temperatures dropped as low as -27°C, and workers at a meat-packing plant in the midlands were warmer inside the freezers than outside.
Many will consider an article that includes the phrase: “…the line between science and climate contrarians…” somewhat dubious in its scientific detachment.
Odd, how climate “science” seems to be the only scientific discipline where scepticism is to be discouraged, if not outrightly ridiculed and pilloried. Interesting to see how you seem so keen to appoint yourself “witchfinder general” in this, Mr Clarke.
More evidence of incompetent data handling, and Karl's thumb on the scale.
Apologies for my brusqueness Radical Rodent; I just took umbrage at your slighting of my professionalism and your accusation of my being Dr. Schmidt. Anyhow, I must be going because I think I can see Dr. Roy Spencer approaching...
As a BOMBSHELL, this looks a lot like a damp squib.
Science
Feb 10, 2017 at 12:09 PM | Phil Clarke
Mann's Hockey Stick was a bomb shell. I believed in it once. Climate Science's continued Denial, means only the gullible still trust Climate Scientists.
When it comes to honesty about this latest farce, Judith Curry is far more trustworthy. Her treatment by those Climate Scientists who believe in faked Consensus data, is excellent proof
When it comes to honesty about this latest farce, Judith Curry is far more trustworthy
Is that THE David Icke? The Lizard Overlords guy?
Feb 10, 2017 at 12:23 PM | Radical Rodent
Climate Science has to Deny normal conventions to exist, including rewriting inconvenient history, to hide the inconvenient truth.
To Deny the lack of Global Warming, they changed it to Climate Change; and then Denied the Pause, by calling it a Hiatus.
Climate Science will now claim they have created Climate Stability, by reducing change to a level that is not measurable, and expect billions of pounds as a performance bonus. Only then will Climate Science realise they need to Hide the Hockey Stick, to prevent further decline in salaries.
Feb 10, 2017 at 1:59 PM | Phil Clarke
No , Judith Curry is a very reliable Climate Scientist, unlike the liars, fraudsters and disinformers that you depend on.
Is that the point of your immaturity, and shortage of fact based science?
Heh, we could ask Phil for attribution for warming, but what warming are we talking about?
======================
kim, it is more serious than that. Phil Clarke wants to have Judith Curry's views dismissed on the basis of the background of the interviewer, not because of what she said. Rather than attack the message, or messenger, this is plumbing unprecedented new depths of failed scientific argument and logic. Where does this leave the credibility of the BBC, or The Guardian who have interviewed Michael Mann and refer to the 97% Consensus as though it was science? Obama is now history, but historians will have to downgrade his credibility on everything.
You would have thought that if Climate Science had some genuine technical issue with what Judith Curry had said, it would have been seized upon.
Phil Clarke and his Green Blob buddies find it important to refer to the Lizard Overlords. As Green Blobbies have been trying to rule the Earth, destroying civilisation in the process, and Green Blobbies are real, whilst Lizard Overlords are not, it does seem that reference to Lizard Overlords is another failed attempt to divert attention, away from the biggest threat to survival of the human race, the evil Green Blobbies.
There is no Global Warming, but Climate Science itself, is overheating. Melt down is imminent, and then we can all breathe more easily.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/10/the-new-climate-denial/#more-22824
Climate Science continues to Deny the honesty of Judith Curry. As Climate Scientists struggle to comprehend the concept of honesty, this article won't be understood by them. They will all claim to have read this, and will want to focus attention on her shoes instead, to demonstrate their understanding of honesty in Climate Science.
Commenter 'Michel' at WUWT.
Heh.
Seeing as you now equate quoting unknowns in a widely-read and commented-on blog site with scientific evidence, Mr Clarke, here is another from that same site (my bolding):
Note that: “…86% of the American population don’t trust them [the mainstream media]…" They – the BBC, CNN, ABC, CBC, et al – have been caught out rather too often with outright lying, or lying by omission; Dr Curry’s views are unlikely to ever be aired on the BBC (certainly not without a host of scary “warnings”, and a small army of alarmists to counter her with nothing but uncontested, vociferous blather). Much as it might grate with your fragile sensibilities, is it any wonder fewer and fewer are accepting what is being said?Well, if PC is going to persist with a notion that we should trash Judith Curry because of some connection with an interviewer, then let's examine Russell Seitz's blog which right now is trashing Delingpole and among other things is running with the Nurse/Delingpole interview in the vein that this was a huge failure on Delingpole's part.
Readers will recall Nurse smiling seraphically as Delingpole objected to the mantra of science progressing through consensus. Then Nurse comes back with his cancer trick and Delingpole was flummoxed. I think a stupid question like that would have taken my breath away: how could Nurse, president of the RS and an FRS himself, come up with such a pathetic argument? What on earth has Delingpole's putative cancer risk got to do with climate science?
But Delingpole stuck to his point about progressing science through observation and testing hypotheses. And rightly so. Nurse should know about Newton's rules for understanding natural phenomena:
Rule 1: We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
Rule 2: Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
Rule 3: The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
Rule 4: In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, not withstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.
I don't want my physics done by consensus - the Kuhnian way. I want it the Popper/Newton/Dyson way. And Nurse and Seitz are fools if they think otherwise. And Seitz is really stupid if he cannot see the failure of Nurse's argument saying Delingpole can't read or understand the evidence. Oh yes he can, but Seitz/Nurse don't understand inductive reasoning.
- Delingpole
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3242gu
PC
Seems reasonable.
Whereas we have Nurse . . .
Nurse: 'It is impossible to achieve complete certainty on complex scientific problems, yet sometimes we still need to take action. The sensible course is to turn to the expert scientists for their consensus view'.
Curry: 'the perceived need for a scientific consensus leads to the situation whereby any disagreement with the consensus is mistakenly viewed as arising from ideology, politics, and consensus. In reality, politics comes in when solutions are discussed , and a scientific consensus that is married to a specific policy option precludes having a mature discussion about these issues. .. . Nurse exposes many issues that have contributed to the growing dysfunction at the science-policy interface.'
So well done Delingpole for making that same point.
Capell, it is sad that Nurse, undoubtedly an expert in HIS specialist field, could be taken in so easily. Perhaps that is why he was elevated to such an influential post in Science.
These things are best dealt with directly. It was an awful mistake by Judith to speak on a channel associated with Icke. But most US people will not be aware of his background, and many academics are terribly naive about many media things anyway. At WUWT I wrote:
It doesn't change the validity of what she said.
The UK Green Party have never questioned the authority of the Hockey Stick. This is not going to help Green Party credibility, or their income.
"Greens" may be in for a rough time in France, Germany and the Netherlands as elections loom, the Paris Climate fiasco crumbles, and Green Blob policies reveal how the EU has been corrupted.
If only they had listened to Judith Curry, and not Mann, and Karl.
Personally, I am not convinced by David Icke, but having just googled his name and "climate change", he is not as gullible as the UK Green Party along with their science advisers. I am sure David Icke will be very proud in years to come, about his part in the downfall of Climate Science and the Green Blob. It brings in to sharp focus those that STILL believe in Mann's Hockey Stick, 97% Consensus and the rest of the rowlocks. How insane is that?
Phil is your pension in zero carbon "futures"?
If so I would be screaming hysterically too.
Just a thought....
Feb 9, 2017 at 5:40 PM | Capell
If you re-read the comment you may notice that I was presenting an account from a respected time-served oceanographer who did take such measurements, not myself. Unfortunately as he is now deceased, he will be unable to answer your questions. You may wish to read the whole aticle, linked.
It is an interesting point about Nurse using Cancer to flummox Dillingpole BUT the thing Nurse doesn't get is that if you went to a "cancer doctor" who got EVERY SINGLE prognostication wrong would you continue to see that doctor OR would you change to someone else?
Secondly, by tying Curry to Ike all the Mann Made Global Warming (tm) scientologists are doing is using him as an excuse to ignore Currys arguments and they do this because they know her arguments are sound! The simple fact is they can't easily argue against her position so have to resort to smoke, mirrors and hand waving.
Its just another example of just how debased and removed from reality Mann Made Global Warming (tm) has become.
Mailman
Mailman, I have good reason to trust specialist Haematologists, and the chemo plus other treatment they prescribe. I don't like it, but I accept it, and the results are promising. They also have a scientific training, are honest, and I can "feel" the benefits.
I would not trust a Climate Scientist to read a thermometer correctly, irrespective of where they had shoved it first, let alone base a dignosis on their adjusted results.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Albert Einstein
Bates, Sunday Times.
denissa
I did grasp you were reporting, but I simply wondered if you knew the answer to what I asked . . .
"A scientific controversy over the impact of climate change on oceans has taken a new twist with research suggesting they are warming more slowly than thought.
Scientists have analysed millions of readings from across Earth’s oceans between 2000 and 2015, finding that sea surface temperature is rising at 1.17C per century compared with the 1.34C per century of previous estimates.
The difference is tiny in everyday terms but is important because the oceans are so large that even a warming by a tenth of a degree represents a big increase in the energy they store — and the potential impact on climate.
It is also politically potent, especially in America where an increasingly climate-sceptic Republican party will see it as confirmation of a suspected slowdown in global warming and evidence that previous warnings were exaggerated.
"
same article: The Sunday Times
My take on this would be: 1.17C/century and the first half of the century (and the first half of the warming) couldn't have been caused by CO2, then what on earth are we worrying about? Why has the UK wasted £320b (Peter Lilley, GWPF) on reducing emissions?
My take on this would be: 1.17C/century and the first half of the century (and the first half of the warming) couldn't have been caused by CO2, then what on earth are we worrying about?
You might want to read the article again. A little more closely.
Feb 14, 2017 at 10:56 AM | Phil Clarke
You might want to look at temperatures more closely, to realise that nothing unprecedented has happened.
Panic over.
Ok, here's a bit more. If we go any further we'll have quoted the whole article:
“The reduced warming emerging in the latest analysis is due to several separate factors,” said Professor Peter Thorne, chairman of the International Surface Temperature Initiative and co-author of the latest research. “This includes corrections to historic data collected from ships and the inclusion of new data about areas covered by ice.”
. . .
In any other field, such detailed findings might matter only to scientists. In America, however, the election of Donald Trump, who has described global warming as “a hoax”, has made climate science a political battleground.
Feb 14, 2017 at 11:41 AM | Capell
I have have looked in other fields, and hedgerows, and woods, and the annual cycle of snowdrops, crocus, daffodils etc remains unchanged. Bluebells and wild garlic will make their appearances as normal.
Some of these modern environmentalists haven't a clue, and highly paid "scientivists" trying to claim that the natural order has been disrupted, don't know what they are talking about.
Spring 2017 could witness massive changes in budget announcements, that won't effect nature at all, but may cause Unprecedented damage to Climate Science.
David Whitehouse at GWPF discusses the next version of ERSST plus some of the antics by the Carbon Brief re. the distribution of this version by naughty deniers.
Link
The greenies are red
Phil Clark is too
And the pause is real
Water in buckets wont do.
Gwendolyn.
"...fields, and hedgerows, and woods, and the annual cycle of snowdrops, crocus, daffodils etc remains unchanged. Bluebells and wild garlic will make their appearances as normal."
Are you going all Wordsworthian on us?
You can take country bumpkinness just a little too far you know.
Capell,
The scientology of Mann Made Global Warming (tm) has been a political battlefield for years...thanks to the lack of actual scientific integrety by climate scientologists.
Mailman
By all the Muldoons Charlie's swung
Something trollish this way comes
He wanders happy as a clod.
Quite unaware that Bate's walked back
The substance of the Gofer's quack
To pause or not to pause,
Because because because;
Karl's gross thumb, a loss,
Nature shrugs, she's boss.
==============
Reactions to the recent Karl 2015 controversy will help Trump identify the 97% of Climate Scientists that have been a waste of Taxpayer funding. The original Hockey Team has been supported by SKeptical Science and their trained experts in Climate Science communication.
If EPA Endangerment Findings concerning CO2 and Greenhouse Gases are deleted, and replaced with Climate Scientists instead, the EPA can be cleaned up, decontaminated and restored to usefulness.
Karl 2015 may have sealed the fate of the Paris Climate Deal, in a final flourish.
Kim, especially in cold weather, thermometers are like car engines, they need proper warming up, to make them more reliable and responsive to demands for increased power.
Golf Charlie,
I think you point out the most obvious of differences between climate scientologists and "cancer" doctors. Clearly the science of cancer is rooted in that stuff called actual science whereas climate science is just smoke, mirrors and a lot of fudged data to prove smoke and mirrors is an effective form of energy generation!
That, however, doesn't change what I was saying. If these specialists got EVERYTHING as wrong as the climates scientologists have you would change to someone else for another opinion (and one you would hope is rooted in that stuff called actual science).
Regards
Mailman
I have looked up the programme where there was a discussion between the incoming RS president Nurse and Delingpole, and it was indeed the one remembered, even though it is more than 6 years old. I remember it because I was particularly unimpressed by Nurse, by his arrogance and by his extremely poor argument. Nurse asked if Delingpole had a relative with cancer would he accept the consensus treatment or dismiss the advice of an expert oncologist and try some alternative treatment. This being a topic closer to Nurse's area of expertise than climate science I would have thought he should have known better. In my experience, my wife had breast cancer, oncology is as much an art as a science, with different practitioners suggesting different treatments. There is no consensus position and the treatments vary sometimes week by week. My estimation of Nurse's expertise plummeted and has never recovered. IMO he is a blusterer who does not learn his brief. Yet looking back at newspaper reviews of his programme you would believe his arguments were devastating.