The UK Information Commissioner’s Office recently confirmed that the disclosure of e-mails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit revealed that some of the scientists violated the UK’s Freedom of Information law by failing to respond to legitimate document requests from other researchers. I blogged on this development here. Initial British news reports indicated that the scientists could not be prosecuted, however, as the legal violations occurred too long ago. But is this really the case? As the Telegraph reports, the relevant provisions in British law appear to preclude prosecution more than six months after authorities became aware of the misconduct, not six months after the misconduct occurred. If this is correct — and I’m not expert on British law — some of the scientists could still be prosecuted for violating England’s Freedom of Information law.
Meanwhile, there are still more (more?!?) revelations of potential scientific misconduct by researchers connected to the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Details here and here.
K Dackson says:
While they may avoid judical judgement, they are losing in the court of public opinion.
Why believe anything these fraudsters have published under their fixed “peer reviews”.
Makes me ashamed to be a Scientist. K Dackson(Quote)
Mark Buehner says:
Look– just because plank after plank of the IPCC case is turning out to be over-hyped position pieces by activists doesn’t mean that much of the actual science wasn’t fraudulent as well. We can’t lose sight of that. And remember– the implications are far to dire to dote on the facts. Mark Buehner(Quote)
JKB says:
Well, one thing is for sure any science degree from East Anglia is going to be suspect. For the young and dumb in their climate program they won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on. Might as well change the name to East Artifice.
As for prosecution, there are plenty in government who wouldn’t want that to happen. Lots of effort will be put in trying to prevent the public acknowledgement of the lies. To save the university, to save the Nobel Peace Prize, to save the political careers of untold numbers of fellow travelers. JKB(Quote)
Joel says:
Um, what about participating in an ongoing conspiracy to defraud? This rubbish is still pushed everywhere one looks, and has been legitimized by men who doctored data to serve the purposes of those who stand to gain from such legitimacy. If that is not criminal collusion, I don’t know what is. Also, I would say the U.K. woman who was voluntarily sterilized may have a case, given that her motivation for doing so, i.e. not depleting non-renewable and polluting fossil fuels, is now proven to have no scientific basis. Moreover, what about intentional infliction of emotional distress. If one were to walk into a room and declare to a wife that her husband was dead or dying, one would be held liable should the wife die of a heart attack or detrimentally rely upon the assertion and spend money on the funeral. These men, having been given a prominent place in the eyes of most as authorities on the subject, walked onto the global stage and declared our planet dead or dying. I would say that the myriad specious “cap and trade” regulation passed globally represent the epitome of detrimental reliance and the millions experiencing stress over the subject have been tortiously interfered with and can only be described as victims. These men must pay, and all capable advocates must find a way. Joel(Quote)
Reasoner says:
There is a lot of misdirection from the main point of the current climate change debate. The current question is not whether there is warming or whether humans are causing a major part of it, but whether it is especially warm now. It doesn’t matter if we have caused global warming over the last 150 years if it is just now warming back up to normal or slightly above normal, from the low of the mini ice age. For all the scientific consensus that we are causing global warming, there seems to be much less consensus that it is as warm or significantly warmer now than during the medieval warm period. The need to “get rid of the medieval warm period” was so great, and the evidence so slim, that they have had to, and apparently continue to, rely on tree rings that give false temperatures for the last 50 years. They claim that other evidence like sediments backs them up, but their continued defense of bad tree rings makes them look desperate.
Furthermore, if the thermometer readings from the last hundred years are in error from something like the urban heat island effect or station miss selection, even if there has been warming and sea level rise and glacier and icecap melting, the warming may be less of a concern compared to the medieval warm period. So even a small error in the last century warming can have a big influence on the question of whether current warming is exceptional.
The odd thing is that some studies have concluded that the urban heat island effect is negligible or at least small. Those studies seem highly suspicious. It is hard to believe that building up asphalt and city around a formerly rural station won’t raise its temperature significantly. In fact Jones apparently published a study of China where he reported in a deceptive manner that the UHI effect was only .1degC per decade compared to .8degC warming from other causes during the period. The trick there is that the .8degC was for the entire period and the .1degC was per decade. So the UHI effect for the entire period was presumably about .5degC compared to .8degC for other causes. That appears to be intent to deceive. That is also a major contribution from UHI effect and raises more questions about whether today is as warm as the medieval warm period. Which studies are right? The ones that show a significant UHI effect or the ones that claim surrounding the thermometers with asphalt doesn’t make a difference? Reasoner(Quote)
Fub says:
One interesting tidbit from the Guardian article Prof. Adler linked:
The argument that the CRU had been swamped with FOIA requests is now demonstrated bogus. If a research unit cannot put together its data into a common package to release to all requests, even those from “paid industry shills” or whatever the current opprobrium is, then how can it expect to release the same data to “legitimate” requests? Fub(Quote)
K Dackson says:
But. But. But.
The “science” is settled.
All requests for information are bogus, because they want to only find fault and nit-pick.
Doesn’t change anything.
Nothing to see here, move along. K Dackson(Quote)
Nobody At All says:
Nothing to see here, move along:
Nobody At All(Quote)
geokstr says:
Given that Greenland is now pretty much ice-bound except for a very brief summer, and in the MWP they had vineyards, livestock, and wheat farming there, it would seem mere common sense that it was considerably warmer then than now, probably even warmer than the IPCC says it will get in the next 100 years even if we do nothing about AGW. But you know what dummies those deniers can be with their ignorant reliance on common sense and whatnot.
Of course, I’m certain that our resident apocalyptics can point us to studies that prove the warmth was only localized to Greenland back then, which makes it understandable that warmists might deem it totally reasonable to throw out any mention of its existence. In order to be absolutely true to the scientific method, the IPCC report relied heavily on peer-reviewed letters to the editor from the Sierra Club (Berkeley Chapter) monthly newsletter, written by near-professional hikers. These conclusively demonstrate how the reindeer flatulence from the Greenland herds themselves would have served to raise the temperature. This would clearly have been locally confined by the rare confluence of the Maunder Minimum phases of both the Jet and Gulf Streams, which has been independently confirmed to have coincidentally occurred at that time, from tree ring data found in New Zealand. geokstr(Quote)
Mark Buehner says:
What the hell is that supposed to demonstrate? Its not a question of absolute temperature, its a question of how far off they are from the ‘true’ area temps they are alleged to report on, particularly compared to past years.
If all the bad thermometer were in Alaska and all the good ones in Florida, you would come up with this same result. Average temperature only tells you that the bad sites were more likely in cooler locations. That doesn’t mean they weren’t reporting correct temperatures! Mark Buehner(Quote)
pmorem says:
Watts responds to Menne et al (2010) here.
Menne et all (2010) uses USHCN v2 data, which is already “homogenized”, effectively bringing all stations to the same quality level. In other words, they’re using a data set which has already been processed to remove the signal they’re “looking” for. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t find it. pmorem(Quote)
Elliot says:
If everybody had bought into AGW there would be no problem. We could all say we were fooled, and that is understandable because how could anyone have known. Nobody could have known it was a fraud. We’re all too intelligent and well educated.
The problem is that many were not fooled, and they loudly proclaimed it was a fraud. So, now we are faced with lots of intelligent, very well educated folks who were fooled and can’t really come to acknowledge those skeptics might be smarter than they are. It’s painful to watch them come to grips with the reality that the skeptics were right and they were wrong.
If it really had been a concensus it would be a lot easier to take. Elliot(Quote)
Eric Rasmusen says:
I, too, am looking for someone who knows even a little bit of English crim law to tell us whether the rather surprising claim that the statute of limitations has run is true. I’ve assembled some info below that weakly suggests it is not at
An Interesting Ex Post Facto Law Case Eric Rasmusen(Quote)
ChrisHo says:
That last line in your reply has been the basis for many to deny any credible evidence to the contrary. It is simple FUD. It is a prized method of all those who cannot support their views. ChrisHo(Quote)
A seriedade da ciência e a irresponsabilidade « De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum says:
K Dackson says:
Paging ChrisHo:
Time to get your sarcasm detector recalibrated.
That is all. K Dackson(Quote)
orca says:
Seattle just had its warmest January in recorded history. The previous record was set just a couple years ago. orca(Quote)
K Dackson says:
orca:
And that proves exactly what? K Dackson(Quote)
orca says:
Just a little data for the oil and coal industry apologists. orca(Quote)
K Dackson says:
Yeah, well, Buffalo had a very cold December.
Proving absolutely nothing.
An old statistician once told me: “Never trust averages. The average American has one ball and one tit.” K Dackson(Quote)
Nobody At All says:
Not withstanding the persuasiveness of your indignation, I note that this study was conducted to determine “how far off [the recorded temperatures] are from the ‘true’ area temps...”
(Tangentially, this criticism is reminiscent of your repeated criticisms that an artificial warming trend is constructed via lowering more distant temperatures and raising more recent temperatures — claims which can be — and have been — empirically tested, and whose veracity is dependent upon a hypothetical dataset nowhere in evidence. I have wasted more than my share of working hours on prior Adler comment strings on this topic; I cannot afford to do so again today.)
I could be reading Watts’s response wrong (please correct me if I am), but it seems as though the first 1/2–3/4 of his post (regarding homogenization) is not written to address the current Menne et al. paper. The homogenization argument is written in response to a past paper (the cited press release is in 2009).
Towards the end of the post, Watts addresses the recent paper, arguing that (a) 43% dataset is an insufficient sample size, and (b) reiterating his claim that MMTS thermometers artificially report warmer average temperatures, based upon a sample of 58 continuous records.
He does not address, much less respond to, the average minimum/average maximum temperature argument in Menne, et. al. Nobody At All(Quote)
Bob from Ohio says:
Ad hominum alert.
“recorded history” in Seattle goes back how far exactly?
Did the Indians keep temperature records in farenheit or celsius? Bob from Ohio(Quote)
Edward Lunny says:
” Seattle just had its warmest January in recorded history. The previous record was set just a couple years ago. “...Hmmmm, I seem to remember something spouted regularly by the warmists, something about weather and climate being two entirely different baliwicks or some such. Has that changed now that the fraud of the warmists is being exposed, or, does it only play when the weather in question is colder than previous. Just a little data for the tree hugging warmist frauds. Edward Lunny(Quote)
orca says:
A real scientist would know the difference between an average and a two separate data point. High and low extremes agree quite nicely with the theory of Global Climate Change. orca(Quote)
K Dackson says:
FIFY K Dackson(Quote)
Anonsters says:
I’ll just leave this here:
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2010/02/more_distractions_on_the_clima.php Anonsters(Quote)
Anonsters says:
And this:
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2010/01/delingpole_invents_another_–g.php Anonsters(Quote)
hugh says:
Going back to the question of whether the East Anglia personnel are in the clear, is it possible that they could be subject to prosecution for destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice, or some similar crimes (UK versions thereof)?
One comment above raised the issue of charges for conspiracy; is conSpiracy A criminal offense in the UK?
How would we measure the limitations periods for any of these potential offenses? hugh(Quote)
LongCat says:
What exactly doesn’t agree with the theory of Global Climate Change? Any data can be bootstrapped into the model. Typical tripe from a carbon credit apologist. LongCat(Quote)
History Punk says:
“The Guardian has learned that of 105 freedom of information requests to the university concerning the climatic research unit (CRU), which Jones headed up to the end of December, only 10 had been released in full.”
Well, that’s certainly better than the American agencies that I’ve dealt with through FOIA. I wish the American right was so concerned about FOIA when its beloved bureaucrats violated the law.(http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20081105/index.htm) History Punk(Quote)
K Dackson says:
History Punk:
“Oh look, a squirrel!” is not a valid defense. Sure sucks when the shoe is on the other foot, don’t it? K Dackson(Quote)
pmorem says:
Nobody at all:
Watts’ response is less clear than it might me. The additional comment regarding homogenization was my own, based on reading Menne et all (2010), prompted by my reading of Watts.
He does not address, much less respond to, the average minimum/average maximum temperature argument in Menne, et. al.
I’ve looked at this for a while. If you look at Menne 2010 Table 1, there’s something curious. I’m reproducing it without error bars or formatting:
Tmax
Adj. Raw
Good 0.35 0.28
Poor 0.32 0.14
Tmin
Adj. Raw
Good 0.23 0.17
Poor 0.25 0.20
Curiously, in all four cases, the adjusted trends were higher than the raw. That doesn’t seem right to me. pmorem(Quote)
K Dackson says:
You, you, you denier, you!
Look, adjusted the “good” maximum up by 25% and the “poor” maximum by 28%.
And adjusted the “good“minimum up 35% and the “poor” minimum by only 25%.
Tell me:
Why do they have to even adjust the GOOD data? Sorta, kinds makes it seem less, you know, good. K Dackson(Quote)
Lee says:
orca...
For the record, one month of weather has no relevance on climate. According to most people that study this kind of stuff you need at least 20–30 years of
reliabletemperature data to remove the noise of natural variability.Of course...when it comes to warmer weather it’s gotta be anthropogenic in nature...because we all know that only cold weather can be caused by natural variability!! Lee(Quote)
Nobody At All says:
As explained on pp.2–4, homogenization adjusts for spatially-isolated, abrupt, sustained shifts in mean temperature readings, because they are observational bias rather than accurate readings of the weather or climate.
Again, this paper does not deal with the reasoning and process of adjustment (though it cites to papers that do discuss adjustment, for those inclined to read), as much as it does with temperature differences caused by thermometer bias. The under-reporting of average maximum temperatures is illustrated in accompanying graphs. Nobody At All(Quote)
zuch says:
Do you believe all advertising you receive? Those “male enhancement” products, ferinstance?
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
orca says:
I’m neutral on the great carbon debate.
I merely offered up the fact that Seattle just had its hottest January on record as a data point, and the hippie hater started spraying spittle.
That’s not science... orca(Quote)
K Dackson says:
zuch:
Wow. I never thought of that insight. Thank you for opening my eyes. K Dackson(Quote)
K Dackson says:
Then WHY are ALL biases expected to be on the COOL side?
Simple logic would tend to point to a given population of thermometers would show a gaussian distribution of readings versus a reference standard.
And if they used thermocouples or RTDs, they can be calibrated very accurately, again against a reference temperature.
This ain’t science, it’s politics. K Dackson(Quote)
pmorem says:
Seattle’s winter is very much “weather”. We haven’t had an East Wind since November. That makes a difference of 20-30F during the winter. Instead, the cold air has gone south.
I understand that New Orleans is having a fairly typical Seattle winter. pmorem(Quote)
Nobody At All says:
True; the logic is quite simple. Nobody At All(Quote)
DangerMouse says:
I merely offered up the fact that Seattle just had its hottest January on record as a data point, and the hippie hater started spraying spittle.
In fairness, if you’re a hippie, anything you say is probably worthy of spittle. Hippies suck. DangerMouse(Quote)
pmorem says:
As explained on pp.2–4, homogenization adjusts for spatially-isolated, abrupt, sustained shifts in mean temperature readings, because they are observational bias rather than accurate readings of the weather or climate.
I don’t recall ever seeing NOAA/NCDC summarize the cumulative effect of homogenization. It would have caught my eye.
I wouldn’t say it’s proof of anything. It does, however, raise the question of whether or not there is a bias somewhere. pmorem(Quote)
HarryEagar says:
What Reasoner said, with one addition.
It seems to have been overlooked, but the Menne paper implies what we could call the Menne Rule: If it takes roughly 71 collection stations to get sufficient reports for 2% of the globe, then it would take roughly 3,500 to get the whole globe.
Of course, you don’t need the whole globe, but I think you need some ‘robust’ (as the Chicken Littles say) proportion of it.
If you are going to claim that it was cooler 100 years ago, then show me your stations. There weren’t 1,700 stations back then. Heck, there aren’t 1,700 stations in the reference network today.
And they have to be well-distributed stations. They cannot all be in Greenland. 100 years ago, there were 0 stations for about 70–75% of the globe.
Without, I am sure, meaning to, Menne (if accepted) just dumped all claims about warming over the past century into the ashcan. HarryEagar(Quote)
K Dackson says:
Nobody at All:
Yes, the logic is simple. So simple it seems to elude some people that thermometers could be reading high and need to be adjusted down.
But that wouldn’t fit the narrative. K Dackson(Quote)
Mark Buehner says:
And how does one go about doing that? Assuming the thermometer works, its giving an accurate reading of its surroundings. The temperature under a AC exhaust on an asphalt driveway is what it is. So assuming that isn’t an accurate average of the surrounding X square miles of earth, how does one go about ‘adjusting’ that reading without simply looking at other thermometers at god knows where and what relation– and once you start doing that, whats the point of pretending you have two distinct data points, because you dont. And if you decide to go moving that thermometer, wherever it ends up what justifies you in in calling that the same data point?!
You were the one pointing to a claim of a Gaussian distribution of adjustments on a third party cite. I simply asked for a clarification of the timing of the adjustments and the curve they create (if any), which clearly is the relevant question, not the average of the adjustments. I don’t intend to go digging through sql to find out for you. Mark Buehner(Quote)
Nobody At All says:
I do not know if this is what you are looking for, but this(from the NCDC/NOAA site) is a description of the construction of the GHCN v.2 dataset (warning: pdf). Tangentially, NASA/GISS is reportedly going to code created open-source at clearclimatecode.org, so feel free to browse. Nobody At All(Quote)
Nobody At All says:
I may have been hard on you, but what the first analysis showed was not the average adjustments, but rather the trend of adjustments. i.e. think slope, not mean. For any continuous dataseries, any attempt to lower past temperatures and raise more recent temperatures would show a positive slope. The first analysis took a distribution of these slopes, which centered on zero. Nobody At All(Quote)
geokstr says:
Nah. Never had the need for them. How about you?
When it comes to temperatures in Greenland during the MWP, I go to the leftists’ own favorite source, wikipedia. You know, that site that recently kicked off William Connolly of CRU fame after it had been revealed that he’d banned anyone who didn’t agree with his views on globaloney, and also wrote, rewrote or editted every one of the 5,000+ pages to make sure they conformed to your precious religion:
Wikipedia: Greenland
Oh, and that Little Ice Age thing, that’s the other inconvenient anomaly that they had to “smooth” out and adjust for along with the MWP in order to make Mann’s debunked “hockey stick” look truly frightening to the great unwashed in flyover country, clinging to their guns and stuff.
Oh, and yes, I am also aware that Mann conveniently claims to have “proven” that both these periods were just local anomalies. Of course they were, because if they weren’t, there goes AGW. As we can see by the last ten years, the climate is just so much more homogenous today, though. geokstr(Quote)
zuch says:
Geokstr’s “wheat farming” and “vinyards” is builltwaddley. Or walrus scat, take your pick.
Vinland (probably Newfoundland or Labrador or even farther south) is supposedly where they found grapes, but if you think you ever could grow grapes on Greenland (in modern history), you’re nuts.
It was marginally warmer there during the MWP (which, despite persistent false claims to the contrary, is included in Mann’s “Hockey Stick”) but not enough to make it the “green land” of advertising fame. And the loss of settlements there was not unequivocally due to poorer weather; it may have also had to do with soil exhaustion, and depletion of the scarce wood (as well as lack of supplies, or Inuit hostility). And the MWP wasn’t a global warming (see Wiki link above).
Geokstr’s approach here is “anecdotal science” or “science by soundbite” ... which is to say, “not science”.
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
zuch says:
70% of the globe is ocean....
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
K Dackson says:
Oh, then it’s just as credible as the claims of so-called “climate scientists” who swore that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.
Until they got caught.
How many other lies will they be caught in? K Dackson(Quote)
Anonsters says:
I suspect that these climate change/AGW-related posts are going down the same road as Bernstein’s Israel-related posts. Anonsters(Quote)
zuch says:
Do you know what “citation needed” means?
Did you click through and look up that cite?!?!? Did you read the cite?
Not to mention, barley is not wheat....
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
zuch says:
Which climate scientists “swore” that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035?
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
pmorem says:
Nobody At All wrote:
I do not know if this is what you are looking for...
I couldn’t find any indication that they’ve analyzed the cumulative effects of homogenization. The question (for me) is whether or not they’ve gone looking for evidence of their own confirmation bias.
More broadly, it comes down to a question of trust.
Concealing data does not inspire trust.
Avoiding prosecution by running out the clock does not inspire trust.
Including known defective information for purposes of hype does not inspire trust.
Gore threw down the gauntlet with “The debate is over”. Ending debate without trust must mean it’s time to fight.
It seems to me that there are two ways to resolve this now. Either building trust, or force of arms. Right now, I don’t think there is a sufficient basis for trust. Where that basis forms (in terms of optimal atmospheric CO2 harm/benefit) is yet to be determined.
Open-sourcing GISTEMP is a step in the right direction. pmorem(Quote)
pmorem says:
zuch wrote:
Which climate scientists “swore” that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035?
Let’s go with R. K. Pachauri, here.
pmorem(Quote)
Nobody At All says:
Also from the NOAA site: documentation of the pairwise homogenization algorithm (warning: pdf); pp. 18–26 describe evaluation of the algorithm, and the accompanying tables. Nobody At All(Quote)
Frances Smith says:
Please use great caution in using Wikipedia as a source for facts and data relating to controversial people, topics (e.g., global warming, MWP) groups, etc. While I applaud open source applications, they do lend themselves to subversion by many people with more time than talent. Frances Smith(Quote)
wfjag says:
zuch — What do you have against Smiling Bob (of the enzyte commercials fame)? He’s a lot more entertaining than most TV comedies or “reality shows.”*
* Not intended as scare quotes. I just can’t figure out was “reality shows” have in common with reality. wfjag(Quote)
Anonsters says:
I’ll just leave this here, too.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/last:360/plot/gistemp/last:360/trend/plot/rss/last:360/plot/rss/last:360/trend Anonsters(Quote)
kdackson says:
Guess you missed the most recent IPCC report. Understandable, as it was well hidden and shielded from public scrutiny.
You know, the one that the head of the IPCC was told about before Copenhaen?
You know, the one where the IPCC has had to walk back from?
You know, aw, nevermind.
Look! Squirrell! kdackson(Quote)
zuch says:
Yes, indeed. We want to see the long form certificate....
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
zuch says:
Huh? Does Pachauri say that “the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035″?
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
pmorem says:
zuch wrote:
Yes, indeed. We want to see the long form certificate....
The number of people ready to throw insults, like “birther” or “denialist” does not help build trust.
I’m really sorry if that’s the only way you can feel adequate within this conversation. It wasn’t intended. pmorem(Quote)
pmorem says:
Nobody At All,
I think the answer is that no, they have not previously released this kind of summary. I did note the investigation of the algorithms treatment of Cheesman, CO. I didn’t get a sense that they’d carefully investigated the cumulative impact, at least within published papers. If I saw that kind of result in my own work, I’m hoping I’d catch it and investigate. pmorem(Quote)
Anonsters says:
@pmorem:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/On-the-reliability-of-the-US-Surface-Temperature-Record.html
Read the updates, too.
For further analysis, see:
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2010/01/25/us-temp-record-reliable/
and
http://www.gilestro.tk/2009/lots-of-smoke-hardly-any-gun-do-climatologists-falsify-data/ Anonsters(Quote)
HarryEagar says:
Yes, Zuch, Pachauri did say that. Context clears it up. When an Indian researcher said they wouldn’t melt that soon, Pachauri called that voodoo science.
Zuch also sez: ’70% of the globe is ocean....’
Which has climate, too. However, 100 years ago, there was temperature data being collected in parts of the ocean by ships. This might be not as good as fixed stations, or, because of the more or less continuous monitoring, it might even be better. But there are data for parts of the ocean. There are not data for more than a small fraction of the land back then.
Even for most of the land for which there are data, the station network would not meet Menne’s Rule. Antarctica, most of Africa, Amazonia, the Tibetan Plateau and southwestern Asia don’t meet Menne’s Rule now. Even more places wouldn’t have met it 100 years ago, including almost all of Canada, Alaska and Greenland.
If you are going to claim — incorrectly, see Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Times of Feast, Times of Famine’ — that the Greenland warming was regional, then you cannot simultaneously claim that the sample of the globe that was being taken 100 years ago was not also regional.
People who claim to know what the global temperature was 100 years are charlatans. HarryEagar(Quote)
kdackson says:
zuch:
Pachauri stood behind the Himalayan galcier statement in the latest IPCC report before Copenhagen. He has recently (within the past week) recanted that assessment.
So, yes. He defended the statement in the report issued under HIS watch when it was convenient. Now that Copenhagen is a total abject failure, and the sources were cross checked (by deniers), he has had to walk that one back. kdackson(Quote)
zuch says:
I was more making a comment on the standards of proof that people seem to need. That’s situational. I’d note for the record that those that insist on “definitive proof” for AGW before acting (and often proclaim the truth of H[0] in the absence of such) are often the same as those that accept as true allegations that Obama is a socialist or wants the Terra-ists to win, without any substantiation for such outrageous claims. If they held Republican congresscritters to the same high standards they insist should be met by climate scientists, they’d never vote for them in a million years....
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
zuch says:
While ocean temperatures tend to be a bit more homogeneous (requiring fewer observations), I’d note that ship traffic is far from uniformly distributed (something that does not escape your notice if you happen to be sailing...).
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
pmorem says:
I was more making a comment on the standards of proof that people seem to need. That’s situational. ...
Very much so.
If you’re asking me to choose one liar over another, so they can be stuffed in a pot with 534 other liars to make sausage, I’ve got a very different standard of proof. Particularly since I’m going to get a chance to revise my decision two years later.
This matter seems to be more serious. pmorem(Quote)
Harry Eagar says:
‘something that does not escape your notice if you happen to be sailing...).’
It didn’t escape my notice in my comment, either.
So, which are you going to do — give up saying the MWP was regional, or give up claiming the 20th c. warming was global? You cannot have both. Harry Eagar(Quote)
Nobody At All says:
You might be interested in the paleoclimatology survey constructed by the Bush administration National Research Council (executive summary here; warning: pdf). Unfortunately, they do not reach your conclusion. It would be nice if we could mitigate global warming by eliminating temperature stations. Nobody At All(Quote)
zuch says:
I was referring to non-uniform distribution of shipping. We keep a sharp watch near shipping lanes and coasts. Very close encounters with freighters are uncomfortable.
Cheers, zuch(Quote)
HarryEagar says:
Yes, Zuch. I get that. We have temp records for the sea lanes of the North Atlantic that go back, in one form or another, to the late 19th c. For the eastern Pacific, nada, even for this month.
Nobody, I’d seen that, and it’s tosh from the first sentence, which claims to have instrumental records going back 150 years. That’s the time when the first white man reached the source of the Nile.
The instrumental records are uneven, unreliable and mostly non-existent. The proxies are uneven, less reliable and in some cases invented or imaginary.
Whatever they are, they are incapable of determining the global temperature to within a hundredth or thousandth of a degree, although Hansen claims to know that.
There has most likely been natural variation towards warm over a century. The idea that the fraction attributable to new gases can be determined is pure nonsense.
I would have been prepared to examine claims that were less precise, but because the claimants are not only claiming to know more than they know but more than they can know, I draw my own conclusions.
I presume a lot of people who visit VC have professional knowledge about standards of evidence. All I have is a war surplus BS detector, but it’s sensitive enough. HarryEagar(Quote)
markm says:
Why would a statute of limitations apply at all? Isn’t the misconduct still occurring, as long as the legitimate FOIA requests have not been met?
As an analogy, and not to imply the East Anglia offense is anywhere near as serious, Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped and held for 18 years. If the statute of limitations on kidnapping was 15 years, would that mean that her abductors could not be charged with kidnapping? I’d say no, because the crime continued right up until she was freed. markm(Quote)