Tag Archives: Climate fraud

Manipulating Temperatures, People & Policy

21 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by in Global Warming, Tyranny

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The heavily-manipulated global surface temperatures quoted by NOAA and NASA point to another “hottest month on record” in July, but the satellite temperature measurements do not agree. Nor do several other widely-followed global temperature series maintained elsewhere, such as the UK Meteorological Office (UK Met Office). I wrote about the manipulation of surface temperatures by NOAA and NASA in January in “Record Hot Baloney“, and in “Fitting Data To Models At NOAA” in June:

“If the facts don’t suit your agenda, change them! The 18-year “hiatus” in global warming, which has made a shambles of climate model predictions, is now said to have been based on “incorrect data”, according to researchers at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Translation: they have created new data “adjustments” that tell a story more consistent with their preferred narrative, namely, that man-made carbon emissions are forcing global temperatures upward, more or less steadily.“

The last link provides detail on the nature of the manipulations. Perhaps surprisingly, rather large downward adjustments have been made to historical temperature data, reinforcing any upward trend in the late 20th century and hiding the current 18-year pause in that trend. Suffice it to say that the “adjustments” made by these agencies are at fairly detailed levels; some of the before-and-after comparisons shown by gifs at this link are rather astonishing. Some climate researchers have started to refer to the temperature series as “reconstructions” instead of “data”, out of respect for the legitimacy of actual data.

In the meantime, the “warmist” propaganda keeps flowing from NOAA and NASA, and it is hungrily swallowed and then regurgitated by media alarmists. The media love a good scare story. They are so complicit in reinforcing the warmist narrative they will ignore the revelation of a faulty temperature sensor at National Airport in Washington, D.C. (another hat tip to John Crawford). It has been recording temperatures averaging 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit too warm for the past 19 months. Now that the sensor has been changed, NOAA states that it will not make any adjustments to the past 19 months of recorded temperatures from the National weather station, despite the fact that they have routinely made many other changes, often without any real explanation.

Here is a recent opinion from Duke University Professor Robert Brown on the divergence of satellite and NASA/NOAA surface temperatures and the adjustments to the latter:

“The two data sets should not be diverging, period, unless everything we understand about atmospheric thermal dynamics is wrong. That is, I will add my “opinion” to Werner’s and point out that it is based on simple atmospheric physics taught in any relevant textbook. …

This does not mean that they cannot and are not systematically differing; it just means that the growing difference is strong evidence of bias in the computation of the surface record.“

Every new report issued by NOAA/NASA on record warm temperatures should be severely discounted. They are toiling in the service of a policy agenda; it will cost you dearly, and it will severely punish the less fortunate here and especially in less developed parts of the world; and it will reward the statist elite, bureaucrats and Green crony capitalists. Ronald Bailey in Reason recently weighed in on the consequences of this “apocalyptic anti-progress ideology“. Or read the wise words of Matt Ridley on “The recurrent problem of green scares that don’t live up to the hype“. Hey greens, relax! And don’t waste our resources and our well being on precautions against exaggerated risks.

A Cooked-Up Climate Consensus

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Global Warming

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Settled-Science

Consensus: the world is flat; the science is settled. Consensus: the earth is at the center of the universe; the science is settled. Consensus: bloodletting can cure diseases; the science is settled. Did these ideas truly represent scientific consensus? They probably thought so at the time, but it’s more likely that they derived from long- and widely-held assumptions that had never been tested adequately via scientific methods. It might have been difficult, if not impossible, to test those propositions using the methods available at the time. There are certainly other examples of  “settled science” that were later revised, such as certain aspects of Newtonian physics.

The so-called “consensus” on climate change is similar to the first few “scientistic” assertions above, except that it’s a much less honest mistake. The most prominent claim about it is that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans have contributed to global warming. That is incorrect in several ways. Its genesis is a 2013 paper by John Cook of the University of Queensland. Richard Tol of the University of Sussex examines the facts surrounding the Cook paper in “Global warming consensus claim does not stand up“. The claim itself is a misrepresentation of Cook’s findings, according to Tol:

“The 97% refers to the number of papers, rather than the number of scientists. The alleged consensus is about any human role in climate change, rather than a dominant role….“

It is well known that the peer review process in the climate research community was fundamentally corrupt during the period covered by Cook’s examination of the literature. Papers submitted to academic journals by climate “dissenters” were often shut out, which would have biased Cook’s findings even if his review had been conducted honestly. Tol goes on to note the distortions introduced by Cook’s research, including a non-representative sample of papers:

“The sample was padded with irrelevant papers. An article about TV coverage on global warming was taken as evidence for global warming. In fact, about three-quarters of the papers counted as endorsements had nothing to say about the subject matter.“

It gets even worse:

“Cook enlisted a small group of environmental activists to rate the claims made by the selected papers. Cook claims that the ratings were done independently, but the raters freely discussed their work. There are systematic differences between the raters. Reading the same abstracts, the raters reached remarkably different conclusions – and some raters all too often erred in the same direction. Cook’s hand-picked raters disagreed what a paper was about 33% of the time. In 63% of cases, they disagreed about the message of a paper with the authors of that paper.“

On top of all that, Cook was uncooperative when asked to make his data available to other researchers. Apparently a hacker obtained the data, which revealed a highly questionable data collection process (and that Cook had lied regarding the existence of time stamps on the surveys):

“After collecting data for 8 weeks, there were 4 weeks of data analysis, followed by 3 more weeks of data collection. The same people collected and analysed the data. After more analysis, the paper classification scheme was changed and yet more data collected.“

In short, the Cook research upon which the 97% claim is based is trash. There are a number of points upon which climate researchers can largely agree in principle, including the fact that greenhouse gases would warm the planet, but only if ceteris paribus is invoked. There are many feedback effects and confounding influences that change the relationship, and the actual time span of data that can be brought to bear on the issue is strikingly short to justify bold conclusions. Unfortunately, the research environment is so politicized that even the data itself is subject to manipulation. Astonishingly, many assertions about the actual climate are, in fact, based on model output, not actual data!

There is strong disagreement at the highest levels of the scientific community regarding the balance of the evidence on climate change and whether it justifies radical policy change. Matt Ridley examines this issue in “The Climate Wars’ Damage To Science“:

“Today’s climate science, as Ian Plimer points out in his chapter in The Facts, is based on a ‘pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored and analytical procedures are treated as evidence’. Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories. Those who express even the mildest doubts about dangerous climate change are ostracised, accused of being in the pay of fossil-fuel interests or starved of funds; those who take money from green pressure groups and make wildly exaggerated statements are showered with rewards and treated by the media as neutral.“

Ridley goes on to recount the litany of scandals that have erupted within the climate establishment over the past few years. It is well worth reading, but ultimately these developments can’t help but damage science, its reputation with the public, and its usefulness to mankind.

Record Hot Baloney

18 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by in Global Warming

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It’s easy to make big headlines that serve a policy agenda when you can control the process generating “scientific” data. Here’s the latest in an ongoing fraud perpetrated by NASA, NOAA and a few other organizations. The disinformation is happily scooped up and reported by the unsuspecting news media, in this case The Wall Street Journal. The headline says that 2014 was the warmest year on record back to 1980, but there are several important respects in which the report from NASA and NOAA is misleading.

The surface temperature records maintained by NASA and NOAA (and others) utilize the same source data (despite NASA’s claim that the two series are “independent”), but they are heavily adjusted by the respective agencies. We can all probably agree that more recent temperature measurements (the raw data) are more reliable due to the availability of better and more numerous instruments (particularly for ocean surface temperatures). However, combining recent measurements with older data in a way that assures comparability is difficult over more than a few decades. Weather stations come, go, and relocate, environmental conditions around stations change with urbanization and airport expansions, and new measurement techniques are introduced.

Constructing a consistent temperature series over 130+ years at the world or regional level is therefore subject to much controversy. Here is a page with links to several good posts of the problems inherent in these efforts. Data is “infilled” and sometimes deleted, and statistical techniques are often applied in an effort to achieve consistency over time. However, it is curious that the NASA and NOAA adjustments over time seem to pivot around the levels of the 1950s and 1960s, as if to suggest that the temperatures measured in those decades are the most reliable part of the series. Take a look at the “gifs”in this post, which show temperatures before and after adjustments. An apparent consequence of the NASA / NOAA statistical techniques, which may seem even more curious to the casual observer, is that new observations can influence the entire temperature series. That is, adding 2014 temperatures to the series may lead to fresh downward adjustments to 1936 temperatures, if it suits the agencies. By the way, 1936 was a very warm year, but according to these agencies, it’s been getting less warm.

Another fascinating aspect of the report on 2014 temperatures is the obvious attempt to propagandize. This Bob Tisdale post sheds light on three serious omissions in the report and the related effort to “spin” the findings for the press:

1)  The range of uncertainty cited by NOAA in background documents indicates that the small margin (0.04 deg C for NOAA, 0.02 deg C by NASA) by which the reported 2014 global temperature exceeds the previous high is within the confidence interval around the previous high. By their own standard, it was “more unlikely than likely”that the 2014 temperature was the warmest on record, but that is not what the agencies report in their “Highlights.”

2) The report states that “This is the first time since 1990 the high temperature record was broken in the absence of El Niño conditions at any time during the year in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean….” Yet there were El Nino conditions elsewhere in the Pacific in 2014.

3) “NOAA failed to discuss the actual causes of the elevated global sea surface temperatures in 2014, while making it appear that there was a general warming of the surfaces of the global oceans.”

Tisdale notes elsewhere that the tiny margins of “record warmth” reported by NASA and NOAA contribute to a growing disparity between reported “actual temperatures” and those projected by climate warming models. The “Warmist” community will view the NASA / NOAA findings favorably, as the new “record high” supports their narrative,” providing new fodder for the agenda to end the use of fossil fuels and to regulate activities deemed “unsustainable.” Unfortunately, the misleading reports are likely to seem credible to the general public, which is largely ignorant of the agencies’ rampant manipulation of temperature data.

Hat Tip: Watts Up With That? and cartoonist Josh!

Occupying a Meaningless Climate Summit

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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Today’s UN Climate Summit was, by all reports thus far, pretty much a waste of energy, that pun very much intended. It was an event for solemn repetition of good and misplaced intentions. Last week, Roger Simon challenged readers to “Suppose They Gave a Climate Conference and Nobody Came.” Well, a few people came, but Simon quotes Newsweek’s apprehension regarding “the failure of leaders from the U.N.’s three largest member nations—China, Russia and India—to attend.” Ron Bailey at Reason notes that neither the U.S. or China were ready to make any pledges regarding future emissions at the Summit. The entire affair was simply a political show, but there are parties to global climate negotiations with serious goals. More on the scam from Simon:

“I went to Copenhagen in 2009 for this website to cover another UN climate conference (COP 15), then considered to be extremely crucial. Several islands — Micronesia, I think — were supposedly about to go under from the rising tides. I ran into the representative from one of those islands and asked him if he was worried. He started to laugh and shook his head. So I asked him what he was doing at the conference. I want the money, he said.”

Nevertheless, there is a political constituency for politicians who wish to play the climate card. It has been forged by certain grant-hungry climate scientists, spotlight-hungry advocates, and an always crisis-hungry media  playing to the back row of the science class. As former Obama science advisor Steven E. Koonin writes, the science is not settled. Anything but.

The editorial The People’s Climate Demarche in the Wall Street Journal describes some of the “free-lunch” nonsense from the climate lobby that passes for good economics, as well as the politics of why momentum on climate negotiations is stalling.

Perhaps a bigger spectacle leading up to the UN Summit was the “People’s Climate March” in New York City on Sunday. Basically, if you think everything about a modern, market-driven society sucks, then the climate change bandwagon is for you. It’s an all-inclusive excuse to bash … almost anything, but especially anything conceivably subject to confiscation! The participants apparently have no inkling that without the fruits of modern capitalism, they would be without the material comforts to which they are accustomed (such as electricity) and have life expectancies of about 40 years from birth.

Roy Spencer minces no words when describing the march:

“The marchers are trying to teach us how we should live our lives, when they have no clue what life would be like if they got their way. Someday we will have a realistic, affordable, abundant energy alternative to fossil fuels. But that day is not here yet. And its arrival cannot be legislated or negotiated with a treaty.”

In another interesting sidelight, Anthony Watts posts a copy of a Craigslist ad soliciting paid volunteers for the climate march.

Finally, the climate march and the subsequent “Flood Wall Street” march (which was described in Reason as more of a trickle) are obviously close cousins to the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2012. Glen Reynolds’ syllabus for OWS is simply a gem.

Latest Manipulations In Climate “Science”

18 Sunday May 2014

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Science corrupted: Peer reviewers suppress a scientific paper coauthored by a highly distinguished scientist for political reasons, reported in Friday’s London Times. The East Anglia scandal in 2009 demonstrated not just fraud in the climate science community, but also dysfunction in the peer review process in climate science. Now we’re seeing evidence that the corruption has gone unabated. “Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of the authors of the study, said… ‘The problem we now have in the climate community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist.'”

Roy Spencer has some thoughts on a closely-related controversy involving Bengtsson here. Perhaps encouraged by the record of the past 17 years, which shows no warming in global temperatures despite drastic predictions from the mainstream models based on CO2 forcings, the public is becoming increasingly suspicious of climate science. Unfortunately, the media (including local weather reporters) has not quite caught on. Spencer: “As I have always said, if you fund scientists to find evidence of something, they will be happy to find it for you.”

Steve McIntyre discusses the Bengtsson case here. It is a reflection of a widespread effort at thought-cleansing in the mainstream climate science community.