WUWT: Smoking gun at Darwin Zero

8 December, 2009 by

Not had a chance to review in detail, but an interesting post at Watts Up With That on temperature records at Darwin Airport. But this quote is very interesting:

“Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style … they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.”

Read it here.

UPDATE: For the first time that I can remember on WUWT, Anthony has made this story a “sticky”:

I feel this story of irrational data adjustment is so important, that I’m giving it a sticky at the top so it doesn’t get buried in the other stories.

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UK Met Office to re-examine and release 160 years of data

6 December, 2009 by

Releasing data

Releasing data

Will this be the start of a flood of data releases from organisations desperate not to be tarred with the CRU brush, I wonder? How many fudge factors will they find in the Met Office code?

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

The Met Office database is one of three main sources of temperature data analysis on which the UN’s main climate change science body relies for its assessment that global warming is a serious danger to the world. This assessment is the basis for next week’s climate change talks in Copenhagen aimed at cutting CO2 emissions.

But this paragraph is the most amazing, and, given my previous post, not at all surprising:

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics. (source)

Yep, that’s right. Move along. Nothing to see here. Don’t want the sceptics looking at the data, they might find something wrong with it! Sadly for the oafish Gordon Brown, the Met Office has in fact gone one step further, and will release the data into the public arena:

The Met Office has announced plans to release, early next week, station temperature records for over one thousand of the stations that make up the global land surface temperature record.

…

This subset is not a new global temperature record and it does not replace the HadCRUT, NASA GISS and NCDC global temperature records, all of which have been fully peer reviewed. We are confident this subset will show that global average land temperatures have risen over the last 150 years. [Well of course it will. We all know temperatures have risen in that period. What it doesn’t prove is man-made warming – Ed]

This subset release will continue the policy of putting as much of the station temperature record as possible into the public domain.

We intend that as soon as possible we will also publish the specific computer code that aggregates the individual station temperatures into the global land temperature record.

As soon as we have all permissions in place we will release the remaining station records – around 5000 in total – that make up the full land temperature record. We are dependant on international approvals to enable this final step and cannot guarantee that we will get permission from all data owners. (source)

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AGW scientist calls Marc Morano an "a-hole" on live TV

6 December, 2009 by

As Anthony Watts puts it: Scientists Behaving Badly. Here’s the clip, yet again, on another flagship BBC current affairs programme, Newsnight (I wonder how long it will be before we get the same level of debate on Climategate on the ABC?):

Admittedly, Morano is annoying, but it’s no excuse for Andrew Watson’s behaviour.

See Morano’s page on this here.

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BBC flagship current affairs programme runs "Climategate" debate

5 December, 2009 by

Debating CRU

Debating CRU

BBC radio’s flagship current affairs programme, Today, has aired a 12 minute debate with Jonathan Porritt, sceptic Philip Stott [amazingly], and the BBC’s environment correspondent, Richard Black.

As Biased-BBC puts it:

Porritt admitted through gritted teeth that there was something to investigate in Climategate (though of course still maintaining that “most scientists” say there is a consensus), while Stott skillfully painted the picture of why there are major doubts about the causation of warming, and that taxation of CO2 would not in any case solve the problem. (source)

Listen here.

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UN to investigate ClimateGate

5 December, 2009 by

Hardly impartial…

Hardly impartial…

Amazingly, the ABC did report this one! Don’t hold your breath, it will be the IPCC effectively investigating itself, so we can be pretty sure it will be a whitewash.

A top UN panel is to probe claims that British scientists sought to suppress data backing climate change sceptics’ views, its head said ahead of the the landmark Copenhagen summit.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the claims – which led a top expert to leave his post temporarily this week – were serious and needed to be investigated.

Professor Phil Jones has stood aside as head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, after emails allegedly calling into question the scientific basis for climate change fears were leaked onto the internet.

Hackers [It ain’t no hacker. This was an inside job – Ed] penetrated the centre’s network and posted online thousands of emails from researchers, including Professor Jones, ahead of the Copenhagen summit which starts Monday.

The CRU at the university in Norwich, eastern England, is a world-leader in the field. [Maybe that should be “was” – Ed]

Dr Pachauri, head of the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations panel since 2002, told BBC radio: “We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it.

“We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail.” (source)

I won’t hold my breath. And at the same time, Australian scientists are doing just that: brushing it all under the carpet and hoping it will go away – all lovingly reported by the Sydney Morning Herald:

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor of marine science at the University of Queensland, said a few out-of-context quotes gained by illegally trawling through ”electronic garbage” did not undermine the huge amount of peer-reviewed scientific data on climate change.

”I think the denialist movement is so desperate, given the overwhelming conclusions of the science, that they’ll do anything,” he said. (source)

I think we all know who’s in denial now, Ove.

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Shock: ABC mentions "Climategate"

3 December, 2009 by

Climate alarmism 24/7

Climate alarmism 24/7

But then plays it down, quotes Pachauri, yawn yawn. Nothing to see here…

Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, will step aside “until the completion of an independent review,” the university said in a statement.

“It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally,” university vice-chancellor Professor Edward Acton said.

Dubbing the affair “Climategate”, some climate change sceptics have seized upon the emails, some of them written 13 years ago, and accused scientists at CRU of colluding to suppress data which might have undermined their arguments.

Sceptics have pointed to phrases in the emails in which climate scientists talk of using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures as evidence that they adjusted data to fit their theories. CRU denies any manipulation.

The head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate (IPCC) Change, Rajendra Pachauri, said last week that the leaks do not affect findings in 2007 that it was more than 90 per cent certain that human activities were causing climate change.

“This private communication in no way damages the credibility of the … findings,” he said, saying that all conclusions were subjected to rigorous review.

Nah, course it doesn’t mate. Destroying data is just standard procedure, I guess?

Pachauri the Denier.

Read it here.

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Phil Jones of CRU "to step down pending investigation"

2 December, 2009 by

Overstated case?

Overstated case?

Breaking news from AP (h/t Climate Depot):

LONDON — Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

The allegations were made after more than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists were posted to the Web following the security breach last month.

The e-mails were seized upon by some skeptics of man-made climate change as proof that scientists are manipulating the data about its extent.

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BBC was sent CRU emails over a month ago

30 November, 2009 by

Climate bias

But because the BBC is the “Biased Broadcasting Corporation” and has already made up its mind on climate change (it’s all our fault), for some strange reason it didn’t think the content of the CRU emails was newsworthy enough to broadcast!

A BBC weatherman has admitted he was sent the controversial emails about how to “spin” climate data – more than a month before they were made public.

It has raised questions about why the BBC did not report on the matter sooner, and will reignite the debate over whether the Corporation is “biased” on the issue of climate change. [It is. Next question – Ed]

Thousands of emails and documents allegedly stolen from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and posted online indicate that researchers massaged figures to mask the fact that world temperatures have been declining in recent years.

The emails sent between world’s leading scientists apparently show researchers discussing how to ‘spin’ climate data and how that information should be presented to the media.

Paul Hudson, weather presenter and climate change expert, has disclosed he was sent the leaked emails, a month ago, and claims the documents are a direct result of an article he wrote.

In his BBC blog written last week , he said: “I was forwarded the chain of emails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the world’s leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article “Whatever Happened To Global Warming”.

“The emails released on the Internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical to the ones I was forwarded and read at the time and so, as far as I can see, they are authentic,” he added.

The BBC has previously accused of failing to cover the climate change debate objectively. Earlier this year, Peter Sisson, the veteran newsreader, claimed it is now “effectively BBC policy” to stifle critics of the consensus view on global warming.

He said: “The Corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that “the science is settled”, when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t.

“But it is effectively BBC policy… that those views should not be heard.”

Goebbels really would have been proud.

Read it here.

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CRU: raw data "dumped" to save space

29 November, 2009 by

Data disposal services

Data disposal services

No joke. This is apparently what happened at CRU, one of the main sources of data for the global warming alarmist camp, according to the UK Times Online:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

And the response from “proper” scientists is understandably one of amazement:

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

One of the comments sums it up well:

“Dear Inland Revenue [ATO, IRS], I enclose my latest accounts. Please note that I accidentally destroyed all the original invoices but I promise they were all entered correctly. Honest!”

Read it here.

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NZ temperature data fudged, claims NZ climate group

26 November, 2009 by

Fudge

Whole lotta fudge

Another CRU-style scandal may be brewing as it is revealed by the New Zealand’s Climate Science Coaltion that the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) appears to have added “corrections” to raw temperature data, leading to increased warming:

Before:

Raw temperature data

Raw temperature data

After:

After adjustments

After adjustments

Read more here, and the original PDF here.

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