Climate change data “fiddling”?
Christopher Booker wrote a piece in the Telegraph that claims that climate scientists have fiddled with temperature data, and calls it “the biggest science scandal ever.”
Here’s a quote:
Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.
This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world ”“ one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.
Booker goes on to describe multiple instances of similar practices, and adds that “this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record ”“ for reasons GHCN and Giss have never plausibly explained ”“ has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known.”
Blogger Ace of Spades writes, “I have some reservations, because it looks like so much something that it feels like this almost can’t be right.”
I’m with Ace on the reservations. This argument has been going on in one way or another for quite some time, and although Booker claims that the explanations offered by the scientists and their defenders aren’t “plausible” to him, they certainly have many explanations for what they do (here’s a sample).
The gist of the back-and-forth, as best I can tell, is that the scientists’ explanations offer the sort of justification that makes me think “garbage in, garbage out.” In other words, there’s so much trouble getting accurate measurements, and so much need to adjust them, that they end up being less than persuasive.
That’s if you accept the explanations at face value. But there have been other, more pointed, critiques (see this and this, for example). I have no way to evaluate the strength of the scientific arguments either pro or con, but I invite the scientists among you to wade in.
Cycle of cynicism.
Brian “what’s-his-name” lying in his capacity as anchor (delivering straight news) on a major network.
Baraka Obama lying about the ACA and its costs, its benefits, and most of the details of its terms.
The IRS lying about its methodical targeting of conservative 501c3 groups.
Hillary Clinton lying about Benghazi and what happened there.
Flim flam and fabrications du jour. Constantly. Persistently.
It’s all very, very disheartening…
Of course they’re falsifying the data, both their careers and ‘religion’ are at stake.
MIT Climate Scientist: Global Warming Believers a ‘Cult’
“Global Warming ‘Pause’ Extends to 17 Years 11 Months”
“Almost 9000 Daily record cold temps in November alone”
“Meteorologist: 2010s officially the snowiest decade in the east coast in the NOAA record — surpassing the 1960s”
“Myth of Arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago…despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now”
“Extent of Antarctic sea ice reaches record levels, scientists say”
If only nature and reality would cooperate, it would be so much easier to SAVE THE PLANET!
…Scientists, politicizing themselves and their profession; eschewing their traditional role as, impartial purveyors of empirical data.
And all within that last few short decades…
UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol admits no global warming for 17 years — Rips bias in IPCC — UN’s ‘inbuilt alarmism made me step down’ — ‘By the time the report was finished, however, it hadn’t warmed for 17 years…
http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/05/20/un-ipcc-lead-author-dr-richard-tol-reveals-bias-in-global-warming-report-ipccs-inbuilt-alarmism-made-me-step-down-by-the-time-the-report-was-finished-however-it-hadnt-warmed-for/
_______________________________________
…and for those, such as me, who have little knowledge of weather and climate models rely on who for accurate information???
When I was an undergrad I had a number of physics courses and had to perform experiments in physics labs. The problem was that you knew what the answer was but after you performed the experiment you couldn’t obtain the correct answer from your data. We had to finagle the data to get anywhere near the right answer. Our lab instructor would read our reports and laugh. Nothing has changed. You must finagle the measured temperature data to obtain the correct answer. You know the correct answer from the climate model temperature output.
There are almost twenty thousand comments on Booker’s piece, some of them very good and many of them viciously political/ ad hominems, as is usual on this subject. My favorite is this quote from Michael Crichton:
” Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.”
My questions to the scientists here are: Why do the alarmists ignore that fact that climate is always changing and that we are now in a mere brief “interglacial period”, following the last real Ice Age that ended 11,000 to 13,000 years ago. Going back at least 400,000 years Ice ages have been the rule rather than the exception on planet earth. What makes now (or even 25-100 years ago) climatically ‘perfect’? And why focus on only the short time scale when earth has been MUCH hotter than it is now on many occasions over the eons? Why all the naked appeals to authority?
There is no earthly way for a citizen, even a reasonably well educated one, to sort out the arguments.
I have been exposed to computer modeling to a rather small degree; but, enough to make me skeptical of models that purport to accurately reflect really complex and dynamic systems. My attitude is; show me the proof.
So, I consulted a couple of friends who are very smart; who have strong educational backgrounds in computer aided analysis; and who did analysis, including modeling, professionally. The response was a high degree of skepticism that it is possible to construct a predictive model of the climate.
Then there is the common sense observation: “I will believe that climate change is a crisis when those who trumpet the alarm act as if it were.”
Finally, there is the political component. That becomes suspect, relative to the paragraph above, as Obama, Biden, Clinton, Gore, et al flit about the planet in near royal splendor with no regard for environmental effect, even as they scold us.
Even if they weren’t manipulating the data and you believed them, it doesn’t address the pollution China and India emit. And little things like volcanic eruptions wipe out any gains we could make even if we all gave up our cars tomorrow.
It’s actually pretty bold. If you want to control people’s lives you can’t do much better than trying to control the air they breathe.
I have been researching the arguments for nearly ten years. There are all kinds of ways for ordinary citizens to familiarize themselves with enough information to make intelligent decisions. First, is there a quality process involved? Answer — no. Science has no quality process. No one ever checks anyone else’s work. They don’t do replication because there isn’t any grant money in it. Second, is it likely that most academic research is flawed? Answer — yes. Lots of reasons to think so. See e.g. Amgen and Bayer replication experience. See John Ioannides work. Do climate scientists have any understanding of previous major changes in climate? No. Is climate a non-linear chaotic system? Yes. Do we understand anywhere close to all that is necessary to model one? No way.
But the best reason to doubt the climate databases is the Harry Read Me file released with the climategate emails. People should read it just to get a feel for just how fouled up the data is.
Climate change defiantly a topic scientifically interesting by itself, but looks this matter was highjack by politics, money greed personal.
Al Gore an example.
Many of our elites–academe, business and finance, the MSM, the clergy, and now “scientists” (from the get go nobody with any sense ever trusted the politicians) have, these days, pretty successfully destroyed their own brands, and a steadily decreasing number of people believe them anymore; the implicit trust that in the past used to exist to a greater or lesser extent has suffered the death of a thousand cuts.
According to polls, our military is the most trusted organization left in our country, but with Obama having purged the officer corps, installing his own ill informed ideologues, yes-men, and puppets–politicians, not warriors–I wonder just how long that trust is going to last.
Society needs a certain amount of trust for cooperation to exist, and to allow society to function; you’d like to think that if you accidentally left some tools, a bicycle, or lawnmower on your front lawn one night, they’d be there the next day.
But, when no one trusts anyone else and cynicism reigns supreme cooperation declines, a society becomes poisoned, and catastrophe is just around the corner.
I have a friend who is a Caltech math PHD. He worked at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research – a subdivision of NOAA) for many years. His job – build computer models to improve weather forecasting, and later, to predict climate change. He left NCAR when the political climate began to eat at his guts. He now teaches math at the Navy Postgraduate School.
I visited NCAR several times and briefed on what he was doing. They had the most powerful computer available at the time – the Cray-2 supercomputer, which was capable of 1.9 GFLOPS at peak performance. (I was impressed!) My last visit there was in 1992. I’m sure they have a faster computer today. Anyway, my mathematician friend told me that the problem was there were too many “known unknowns” where they had to make guestimates at parameters to enter into the computer to make their models. He was convinced that what they were doing was more religion or art than science.
The “True Believer” scientists in the warmist community are typical libs. In their eyes man is destroying the environment. If there is climate change, (Never seeming to ask if the climate hasn’t always changed.) man must be responsible for it. First it was Global Cooling in the 70s. That was blamed on burning coal in power plants. The particulates were supposedly blocking the sunlight, causing cooling. Then when temperatures didn’t keep going down but started increasing they changed their tune and found a culprit – CO2. They made computer models and the models showed catastrophic warming. That’s when they began to harp on the need for government regulation of the use of fossil fuels to cut CO2 emissions. To continue to prove the case for the regulation they had to show continued warming. That’s when the began to “adjust” the raw data to fit their expectations.
The warmists are doing this with a clear conscience because they really do believe it’s for the good. Some of them are literally beside themselves because it looks like people are not buying their arguments for government regulation of fossil fuels to save the planet. As more climate scientists, mathematicians, geologists and geographers examine the data that isn’t kept secret and find problems with the data, predictions, and models; the enterprise of promoting disastrous climate change caused by man is slowly being discredited.
All progressives want more government power. Close control over energy production and use is a very good way to control the citizens. So, the subject of fighting Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CACC) is a tool they are eager to use. Pace President Obama’s assertions that CACC is our greatest danger.
There are many websites where decent climate information can be accessed. My favorites are:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://climateaudit.org/
They see patterns in the chaos.
It’s not a religion since it doesn’t have a discernible moral foundation. It does, however, have a secular outlook, following the profits of wealth, pleasure, and leisure. It does have a left-wing perspective, with a design to consolidate capital and control in minority hands. It even has mortal gods (e.g. politicians) and priests (e.g. scientists) to promise material returns and preach certainties outside of the scientific domain. It’s a cult.
The fiddling with the temperature data has been known for about a decade to the community of skeptics. The website WattsUpWithThat.com organized a community survey of the US temperature station network asking volunteers to simply photograph the stations and document whether they conformed to US standards. These stations are the ones used to compute the US “temperature”. Only 20% did, the rest were improperly situated in such places as next to barbecues, in asphalt parking lots, and airport runways. Guess which way the temperature they report is biased.
nn: “It’s not a religion since it doesn’t have a discernible moral foundation.”
It most certainly does. Gia as Earth goddess vs greedy capitalists. The meme drones in the background of every argument.
It is no secret that climate scientists have changed the data. They are very open about it. They even have a term for this fudge factor – homogenization.
No matter how plausible their explanations for homogenization may seem, once they begin to manipulate the data all bets are off. Homogenization is almost always strongly biased towards a warming trend by lowering temperatures in the past and leaving them the same now. That warming bias is the basis of the scandal.
There are reasons to reverse the trend and lower modern temperatures but those don’t seem to enter into the homogenization process. As the World population increases many thermometers are affected by the Urban Heat Effect. Black pavement, dark building roofs, and power use such as air conditioners and cars all tend to increase the temperature of cities. Also it turns out that modern automatic thermometers tend to measure identical temperatures slightly warmer that the old mercury thermometers.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and increased amounts will undoubtedly cause slight warming. The effect of carbon dioxide is on a logarithmic scale in which each doubling has less effect on the weather. Since the present level of carbon dioxide already absorbs most of the radiation in its absorption band multiple times before it escapes, the effect of additional carbon dioxide is limited.
These graphs of paleoclimate should help put things into perspective. Remember that ice ages are much more destructive of human life than warm weather.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SsVwqCgB-LI/AAAAAAAABKo/U92CnYMmeSU/s1600-h/Vostok-400Kd.jpg
If you are a scientist there’s no governmental money for you if you say, “There’s no man-made climate change.” But if you say there is, your entire career will unfold before you. What else is there to it?
21 century governance: smug
The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/7111525/UN-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article.html
What I read is that the heat island effect increases urban readings compared to rural readings. Their solution? Adjust up the rural readings. If this is true, there is no excuse. It is fraud.
AGW is Horseshit.
My favorite recent instance of the Climate Koolaid drinkers looking like the clowns that they are: Last year’s expedition into Antarctica to measure the catastrophic effects of AGW on shrinking those pesky caps. The expeditionary ship was iced in and locked. So, a relief-rescue ship came and….was iced in, too. The 2-Groups had to leave the ships where they stood immovable and had to retreat on-their-legs.
CANNOT possibly make this stuff up. The World Turned Upside Down.
But, Fear Not: Obam-Bam states that “Climate Change” is a Far Bigger Danger than Radical Islam(NOT that he called the Butchers that!!)
I just was at the *accuweather* there is a comments section just about 6 remarks in a Lefty posts:
These conservatives fueled by Faux News will continue to deny SCIENCE
So (sigh) we are still dealing with LI Citizens who are hopelessly brainwashed.
BTW none of the comments mentioned doubting climate change, everyone was posting their experiences with the snow situation. Too bad I didn t have posting previleges there I d have given him an earful, lol !
I saw this article the other day: U.N. Climate Chief: We’re ‘Intentionally’ Transforming The World Economy
I’ve been saying all along that “global warming” is nothing more than a ruse to promote world socialism. Nice to see them finally come out and admit it.
For decades leftists have claimed that war is caused by capitalism, poverty is caused by capitalism, racism is caused by capitalism, sexism is caused by capitalism, and on and on. Now they’re claiming that capitalism threatens the future of the earth itself and puts all of our lives in jeopardy.
Of course, the remedy for all of these things is socialism.
***
This kind of scientific dishonesty is very worrisome. Our modern technological civilization depends on use of the scientific method.
As if it weren’t bad enough that 7th century barbarians are running amok and terrorizing civilized people, if people lose confidence in the integrity of scientists and conclude “they’re all a bunch of liars”, we are headed for a new Dark Age.
carl in atlanta at 5:27 pm,
The answer to your question was explained many years ago by SciFi Grandmaster R.A. Heinlein; “Most “scientists” are bottle washers and button sorters.” He also explained the difference between actual scientists and the majority, who pretend to be; “One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits… To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.”
This reminds me of a quote by someone from Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union:
He meant that while capitalism is basically sound, individual capitalists can be greedy or crooked. But socialism itself is inherently flawed.
Likewise, the scientific method is sound. But it depends on the honesty and integrity of individual scientists.
Ray on undergrad lab:
The problem was that you knew what the answer was but after you performed the experiment you couldn’t obtain the correct answer from your data. We had to finagle the data to get anywhere near the right answer. Our lab instructor would read our reports and laugh.
Which reminds me of the lyrics some of us set to Yellow Rose of Texas about our senior lab. An excerpt:
“Although we know it’s lousy [the data is lousy], we never hold a grudge
‘Cause after all we’re learning the Factor Sub Fudge.”
Yes, the good old fudge factor.
All instruments, from Geiger counters to radar guns to thermometers, are calibrated to plus or minus 10%. Even the NOAA upon serious push back admitted their claim that 2014 was the warmest year on record was only 38% accurate and they were basing their claim on instruments that were reliable to 0.5 degrees accurate and their recorded ‘global temperature’ record breaking temperature was 0.02 above the previous record. When it comes to global warming – extreme climate change its watermelons all the way down.
Without examining any scientific issues, it should be clear that the climate alarmists behave atrociously, and therefore shouldn’t be taken very seriously. A brief summary: they call people who disagree with them “anti-science”, they say skeptics are as bad as holocaust deniers, they refuse to release data and code, they show no concern when their predictions don’t come true.
And they adjust. What is the algorithm they use to adjust? Where is the code that takes raw data and other information as input, and outputs the adjusted data? “Algorithms … we don’t need no stinking algorithms!”
“carl in atlanta” provided Crichton’s key quote, a nice statement on the philosophy of science.
AGW is not science. Period.
Because it is not independently verifiable.
The data “used”, we now know, is crap (WattsUpWithThat).
The computer models are just that–models–Models are not reality. One cannot verify the future until it becomes the present.
So none of this crap is science.
And you do not need to be scientific to understand this!
“Multi-variate analysis is ALWAYS the weakest.
AGW is so, on steroids and hysteria.
AGW is simply new wave shamanism.
My graduate training is in environmental science (at the University of London), and after 2007 to 2009, I went from being a worried warmer to a luke warmer. And I lived for almost 20 years in the Hothouse or True Belief in environmental idolatry that is Boulder Colorado.
As J.J. says, above
http://neoneocon.com/2015/02/09/climate-change-data-fiddling/#comment-871309
NCAR is one of the several federal funded labs there that promote this religion. And “climate science” is the second biggest single science item in the federal budget, only trailing medical research. Gotta keep Gaia fed by feeding “us!”
There was a rare science debate on global warming at the University of Colorado at Boulder last April at the Conference on World Affairs. In it, Kevin Trenberth of NCAR faced of against climatologist Judith Curry of Georgia Tech.
While the debate was not preserved for posterity, the powerpoint slides used were.
Curry said: “disagreed with about 85% of Trenberth’s presentation.”
Curry sums her side, thuly: “I regarded presentations like Trenberth’s to be propaganda” – “When Trenberth answered a question citing a bunch of ‘facts’, I said that there are very few facts in all this; there are incomplete and ambiguous observations, theories and hypotheses, and models that don’t work very well.”
There are also NPR interviews and Judith’s Congressional testimony.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/04/11/curry-versus-trenberth/
The most important thing about climate change which almost nobody understands is that the whole notion of a global climate is a statistical concept, namely some averages taken over the surface of the planet and over long enough time period, usually 30 years. And almost nobody understands statistics except experts in statistics. And there are many ways these averages can be made, so it is always possible to choose the method to make something to look big or small. Another tricky concept is statistical significance and testing statistical hypotheses. This left so many room for manipulation and speculation that climate science now is very weak and belongs to the same category as social sciences or psychology – partly science, partly art and partly philosophical speculation inherently subjective and open to ideological manipulation.
I must add something that many (probably, most) scientists would vehemently object: scientific method has its inherent limitations which make impossible to strictly apply it to systems with sufficient complexity. But this is an inavoidable and strictly proved result of mathematical theory of complexity and Chaos theory. That is why wheather prognosis it principally impossible for period more than a week. I know, of course, that wheather and climate are two different things, but not so different as people think: both are statistics, just for different periods of time, and equations used for model predictions of both are just the same. That how the first strange attractor was discovered by meteorologist Edward Lorentz – see Lorentz attractor in Wiki or elswere. Is climate just as chaotic in its nature as wheater is – still is an open question. We have no means to answer it without history of observation much longer that we actually have, and if it is, modelling approach is futile: no chaotic system can be successfully modelled to identify parametres of the models from the first principles, without long enough time series of observations.
Weather, of course.
50 years from now someone will write an essay explaining how climate change was actually a metaphorical reference to liberals losing their minds.
It is a scheme to transfer wealth from energy producers (and regions) to non-energy producers (and regions). And power that goes with wealth. Notice the global climate changer gurus never cut down on their own personal energy consumption because that is not what it is all about. It is about who gets paid.
As one poster here says, href=http://neoneocon.com/2015/02/09/climate-change-data-fiddling/#comment-871428 title=
AGW is not science?
Yes and no, I think. “Yes,” because its many assertions of “science” are not so. And “no” – because some of its claims can be falsified by observations or experiment.
For instance, the IPCC calculates a man-made heating effect from added CO2 from the past 18 years that ought to have increased the earth’s temperature some 43%. And – because of the “pause” demonstrates – it has not.
Dr David Whitehouse (PhD, astrophysics, Manchester), an international prize winning reporter and former BBC science news editor, spends less than four minutes quickly explaining how mysterious this circumstance is for climate CO2 driven orthodoxy, HERE “What caused the pause?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOJ4W4XJARs
And the failure to measure a mid-atmospheric “hotspot” is another falsification, as Dr David Evans (EE from Stanford, physics and stats masters) explains in 12 minutes,
“The climate skeptics case”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc
(voiced by Stephan Molyneux); or in text at his science writer wife’s blog,
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/dr-david-evans-the-skeptics-case/
If CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and experimental evidence suggests it is, then adding CO2 ought to warm the planet at least somewhat.
The first claim is an experimental one, and it too is falsifiable. The second claim, as others above point out, is very difficult to measure because it is a multi-variable problem. (A “wicked problem” as Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry terms it.)
If so, then CO2 is not the primary climate driver CO2 theory (as Dr. Evans nicely explains), as is typically asserted – and thus, given the ongoing pause, it is likely significantly weaker.
It is quite possibly negligible – or else simply lower than than IPCC estimates, like only 2C degrees – and this not far fro the past century’s warming of 1 to 1.5C degrees.
To go purely by measured satellite temperatures of the past 36 years, and to extrapolate linearly, we have about 1.1C degrees per century – and falling with each year of the pause. Which is a far cry from the 2.5 to 5C degrees the IPCC advertises.
Worse, still – the hundreds of billions of dollars tossed at “the problem” of man-made global warming have not produced any increasing certainty about its consequences, as the IPCC indirectly admits: SEE graph http://sciencebits.com/files/pictures/climate/SensitivityVsTime.jpg
Question: And why don’t they cite satellite temperature measurements?
Answer: See this piece from yesterday:
The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time — Part III
Without addressing the particular issues involving those few temperature records, which have been know for some time, there are problems with using the available thermometer data to produce an average temperature. Thermometers measure local temperatures at the thermometer bulb or other sensor. That is a small volumn, maybe 1/4 tsp, and locally the temperature is strongly affected by the surrounding box, it’s orientation, the paint and it’s age, changes in landscape, surrounding buildings, etc., etc. The temperature can change dramatically with small changes in location and time of measurement. There are also not many thermometers available that have calibrated long term data and those that exist are not uniformly distributed over the earth’s surface. Now consider the problem of using those few thermometers, that sparsely sample a system that varies widely on small scales in time and space, to produce global or regional averages capable of detecting changes of a tenth of a degree or less. There is simply no good way to do that, and there is no good way to validate the different methods that have been tried. The only data I think is truly adequate to the task is the satellite data, and that has not been available for very long.
The satellite temperatures sensors measure the atmosphere down to about 5,000 feet or so, over about 80 percent of the earth’s surface. It correlates well with weather balloon data – which is roughly twice as long – to around 90%.
It is highly accurate – so accurate that the warmth to the atmosphere from sunlight reflected off the moon is measurable, that is about 0.03C degrees.
You can see the real fraud at
http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2013/7/18/what-is-the-greatest-scientific-fraud-of-all-time
And scroll down to the GISS temperature plots of 1999 and 2011. In the first, the 1930s are clearly the warmest of the 20th century. By 2011 the adjustments, homogenization, and other statistical tricks had cooled the 30s and heated up the present.
GISS = Goddard Institute for Space Science, a division of NASA that was directed by James Hansen for years.
Ray Says:
February 9th, 2015 at 5:20 pm
When I was an undergrad I had a number of physics courses and had to perform experiments in physics labs. The problem was that you knew what the answer was but after you performed the experiment you couldn’t obtain the correct answer from your data. We had to finagle the data to get anywhere near the right answer.
* * *
One of my college friends turned away from his chem lab experiment for a moment, and when he turned back there was a dead fly laying on the scale with his precipitated solids.
After panicking briefly, he did the only thing a real scientist would do: caught 10 more flies, weighed them, took the average, and deducted that from the total weight of fly and precipitate.
He claims to have had the only correct answer in the class.
carl in atlanta Says:
February 10th, 2015 at 8:34 am
Question: And why don’t they cite satellite temperature measurements?
Answer: See this piece from yesterday:
The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time – Part III
* * *
I was looking to see if anyone would reference the Homewood GIFs posted by Powerline (which your link links to but doesn’t show).
Go over and take a look; they are hilarious.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/02/inside-the-global-warming-scandal.php
NOTE: be alert for temp changes on the vertical axis, to fit the data points into the boxes; it exaggerates the shift, but doesn’t change it.
AesopFan at 12:49 pm:
Those are almost as good as tye Rathergate GIF! How in the world is that “homogenization”?
I will say this: Professor Judith Curry (of the blessed Georgia Institute of Technology) posted an explanation for these adjustments last July, claiming that while they may not be accurate they’re not done in bad faith. From what I’ve been reading ever since ClimateGate erupted (no pun intended) she’s well-respected by most people on both sides (Although she was once viciously savaged by Michael Mann). I especially admire her for her steadfast support of Mark Steyn’s first amendment rights (regardless of the “science”).
I’m shocked. SHOCKED! That scientists would twist the data to fit the “climate change” theory. Failing to do so would me that scientists would loose funding, loose key positions, and probably loose friends. But that’s no reason to believe that they would change the data.
I would like to add support for those who state that climate modeling, especially over long periods of time, is unlikely to be realistic. The goal of modeling is to study the effects of different variables on the overall environment, expecting it to do more is unrealistic. That some people purport that it shows increased temperatures within a century is amazingly unprofessional.
BTW, 1) the climate is always changing, 2) if it warms up in one place it creates conditions that will change it, not necessarily warm it, in another place.
I’m a physicist: BS Physics, MIT; PhD Physics, U C Berkeley. I’m not a climate scientist and don’t know the field. What I do know, and have known since I was 15 years old, is that data are sacred. You may interpret them however you like, but when you publish, you start with observations. If you want to correct them, then fine, but report the observations and explain the corrections. To deviate from this approach renders your analysis useless.
at what point will people realize that collusion at the social political level can create whole systems of lies for the benefit of those in power once they accept that there is no god, and so there is no morals, and so being self serving liars is as good a position as any other, in fact better when one is at the pinnicle of collusion and knows what is going to be foisted.
been saying this thing was a hoax from day one more than 10 years ago… but the wieght of liberal idiots driving home their teams position, makes or made any form of refutation impossible.
the reason is easy. to refute the lie is to first accept the lie as valid, and forget that they have to prove their point, which they NEVER did. they assumed the positon and so challenged others to disprove a lie, using all mannter of social shaming, nastyness, name calling, etc
data is not sacred as wGraves puts it when the people who are doing the work are atheists and so think that there is no moral wrong in their tweaking numbers so as to build a career. i work in medicine and there are TONS of socaislts docs who think that writing papers and never bringing any of their ideas to market or to change course to a more beneficial item would be their choice. they feel they are entitled to produce paper to throw on a stack of other paper, and not that the process should lead to something the people can use and they monetarily benefit from. that attitude of capitalist beneficience tends to be with the docs from india, who persue such like mad, and are very much disliked by the socialist docs who think that producing paper is enough. even worse, they think their work is so important that someone else will wander by, pick their papers out of the mountain of papers that include doing the same work over again because they dont know it was done many times already (they dont look at the stack), drop their personal work, pick up the other persons work and then work hard to bring it to life. as i pointed out, if your not going to persue your ideas to their end result in some device or treatment, then who do you think will?
the point is not to really maximize discovery and cures, but to be paid to play and investigage whatver you want to do under the false guise of a productivity that does not produce. siting with tenure, working on ideas that are not fruitful but are fun or what you want to play with, is how it works now.
even worse, they think that they actually create things in society, but i pointed out more than once that its not they but engineers… at best the researchers create another leggo block or thing for engineers to use, but they seldom do anything themselves. if they do, they tend to hire engineers… but then think that its their paper that is everythig.
sorry… but one facet does not a gemstone make.