More evidence of GHCN corruption

For the past six days, several climate scientists have discovered an alarming trend: clear evidence of alteration of historical data at weather stations around the world, in order to support the contention of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

The changes appear to affect the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN), a project of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climate Data Center. Note that this is the same agency that employs Dr. Eugene Wahl, who might be implicated in the research misconduct allegations made against Michael E. Mann at Penn State University.

Richard Keen at the University of Colorado was the first to notice the changes. On December 5, he published this report comparing his own research into the climate of Alaska with the official version of the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). He found no evidence of warming in Alaska over the past three decades, and no substantial difference in average temperature between 1935-1944 and the present time. Overall he found a warming trend of 0.69 Kelvin per century over the span of the twentieth century--while the GHCN dataset projects a warming trend of 2.83 K/century. (The Kelvin is the International System equivalent of a Celsius degree.)

Keen published his findings at icecap.us. They were little noticed until three days later, when Willis Eschenbach published this entry at WattsUpWithThat, containing an analysis of the raw data at the weather stations in and around Darwin Airport in Australia, and the data as adjusted by GHCN. Eschenbach charged that the Darwin data had been distorted, not adjusted, and suggested that the data ought to have been left alone, or else given one single adjustment, downward by 0.6 Kelvin, of the temperature record of 1941 and prior. The result of the official adjustments was a linear warming trend of 1.2 K/century, whereas the raw data showed a cooling trend of 0.7 K/century. Had the data received the single adjustment proposed by Eschenbach, the trend might have been nearly flat.

Worse yet, says Eschenbach, the data from just one station, identified as Station Zero or Darwin Zero, received an adjustment giving it a warming trend of 6 K/century.

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.

Eschenbach admitted at the time that his findings at Darwin could be an isolated case. But shortly after the Eschenbach entry appeared on WattsUpWithThat, a reference to it appeared at The Air Vent, whereupon a reader mentioned and linked to Keen's Alaska study. Furthermore, another blogger published this entry (repeated here at WUWT) concerning faulty weather-station siting in Western Australia.

Today, Anthony Watts himself reported on a comment by a reader on the most disturbing finding yet: several GISS station datasets have been altered. The only reason why Watts and his commenter could detect the deletion is that Watts had saved the data from two of the affected weather stations (Orland, CA and Fairmont, CA) two years ago. The alteration at Orland is more serious: prior temperature records (between ca. 1880 and 1900), clearly warmer than subsequent temperatures, are now missing. Those data were in place as recently as 29 December 2008 and are not present today. By way of explanation, the GISS data selector (captured by Watts) says this:

Note to prior users: We no longer include data adjusted by GHCN and have renamed the middle option (old name: prior to homogeneity adjustment).

Watts suggests that the problem might be not with the GISS data but with the GHCN dataset upon which GISS depends for historical data.

SOURCE






ClimateGate Research Unit Disables Its Website

More lies and evasions

The Climatic Research Unit at the heart of the ClimateGate scandal has taken down most of the information previously available at its website.

Prior to November's release of controversial e-mail messages and documents from Britain's University of East Anglea, there was a separate website for the institution's CRU that allowed readers to review articles and studies created by and for the Unit.

Now, no matter what link one tries to access via a Google search, it directs you to a page that reads: "Due to the present high volume of visitors to this page, you will shortly be directed to the latest news about CRU on the main University of East Anglia website, or you can go there immediately by clicking on this link."

Once there, readers are exclusively offered the following:

CRU Statements

* Sir Muir Russell to head the Independent Review into the allegations against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)

Today the University of East Anglia (UEA) announced that Sir Muir Russell KCB FRSE will head the Independent Review into allegations made against the Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

* CRU update 3

Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit. Read more

* CRU update 2

The University of East Anglia has released the following press release and statements from Prof Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Prof Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit, and from CRU.

* CRU update 1

It is a matter of concern that data, including personal information about individuals, appears to have been illegally taken from the university and elements published selectively on a number of websites.

As such, you can now only retrieve statements from CRU concerning the current controversy, but NOT information and data related to it.

For instance, as Anthony Watts reported moments ago, you can no longer retrieve information about Keith Briffa's tree ring data which is so crucial to the whole manmade global warming myth.

In fact, the following links available at Google all redirect to the CRU Statements page:

* Climatic Research Unit

* Index of /cru

* Temperature Trends: Surface (CRU)

* Data available from CRU

* About the Climatic Research Unit

* CRU information sheets

Some pages don't redirect at all. Temperature Trends: Surface (CRU) goes to a page that says, "Sorry, but the page you requested does not exist."

As for the idea that this is because of "the volume of visitors," Watts noted, "[I]f indeed 'traffic' is a concern, redirecting to another page on the UEA server system doesn’t do much for the load, it just moves it around."

Will global warming-obsessed media that have been either ignoring or downplaying ClimateGate notice what's happened at the website of the CRU in the middle of this scandal, and if they do, how will they report it?

SOURCE. See also here for more comments.





The world must take action on climate change even if the science is not correct?

My! How the false fronts are falling!

Following the ‘climategate scandal’, Mr Blair said the science may not be “as certain as its proponents allege”. But he said the world should act as a precaution against floods, droughts and mass extinction caused by climate change, in fact it would be “grossly irresponsible” not to.

The first week of key UN negotiations on climate change saw clashes between the rich and poor world over the failure of countries like the US to commit to strict cuts in carbon dioxide. Later this week world leaders, including Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama, will arrive.

Mr Blair admitted that the talks are “one of the toughest negotiations that international leaders will ever have been involved in.” But despite sceptics claiming emails stolen from the University of East Anglia question the science, he said it was urgent to act now. “It is said that the science around climate change is not as certain as its proponents allege. It doesn’t need to be. What is beyond debate, however, is that there is a huge amount of scientific support for the view that the climate is changing and as a result of human activity,” he said.

“Therefore, even purely as a matter of precaution, given the seriousness of the consequences if such a view is correct, and the time it will take for action to take effect, we should act. Not to do so would be grossly irresponsible.”

A new report from the ‘Breaking the Climate Deadlock Initiative’ found that the current commitments of rich countries would not be enough to stop global warming. But Mr Blair insisted that even a weak agreement would set the world on a path to a "low carbon future" by encouraging investment in green energy and he suggested a review every five years to toughen targets. He also called for an agreement to halt deforestation that is responsible for a fifth of the world's emissions by paying poor countries not to chop down trees.......

SOURCE






The "Warmest decade" claim

Don Easterbrook shows below that even if we accept the "massaged" figures from the Warmists, the claim is still misleading


Figure 1. Atmospheric temperatures 1900 to 2009. The blue line shows global cooling for the past decade; the red line shows the length of the decade

The decade of 2000 to 2009 appears to be the warmest one in the modern record, the World Meteorological Organization reported in a new analysis on Tuesday. Does that mean that the past decade has been cooling? No—of course not. Comparison of the red line in Fig. 1 with pre-1998 decades shows that the past decade is warmer, but the blue line shows cooling during the past decade—although the decade is warmer than previous decades, the climate did cool during the decade.

Thus, the claim that this proves no global cooling during the past decade is totally false. This is a difficult concept for non-scientists (and apparently some scientists!) to grasp. An analogy would be riding a bicycle up a long hill for a century, going over the crest of the hill and coasting downhill for a decade. Even though you have been going downhill for a decade, you are still higher up the hill than previous decades.

SOURCE







Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up

Media No Longer Giving Gore Free Ride!

There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday. The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast. “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming....

Perhaps Mr Gore had felt the need to gild the lily to buttress resolve. But his speech was roundly criticised by members of the climate science community.

“This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics,” Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. “You really don’t need to exaggerate the changes in the Arctic.”

Others said that, even if quoted correctly, Dr Maslowski’s six-year projection for near-ice-free conditions is at the extreme end of the scale. Most climate scientists agree that a 20 to 30-year timescale is more likely for the near-disappearance of sea ice. “Maslowski’s work is very well respected, but he’s a bit out on a limb,” said Professor Peter Wadhams, a specialist in ocean physics at the University of Cambridge.

Dr Maslowki, who works at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 per cent of the ice, but he said he expects some ice to remain beyond 2020.

He added: “I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this,” he said. “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore’s office.”

Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist at the Massachusets Institute of Technology who does not believe that global warming is largely caused by man, said: “He’s just extrapolated from 2007, when there was a big retreat, and got zero.” [i.e. another stupid and dishonest straight-line projection -- in an area where there are no stright lines]

SOURCE







Oklahoma senator plans to rain on climate talks

The final week of the United Nations climate change summit boils down to a battle between President Obama and the self-described "skunk at the picnic." Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who has called global warming a "hoax," plans to travel this week to Copenhagen. He'll stay just long enough — as few as three hours, he says — to tell heads of state that the Senate will not pass an energy bill that would limit greenhouse gas emissions. "We know (the bill) is never going to go to a vote," Inhofe said in a recent interview. "It's dead. It's gone … I'm not going to allow them to think America is going to do something it's not."

Delegates from other countries say that without Congress' support, Obama won't be able to keep whatever promises he makes when he arrives here Friday to try to seal a deal on capping emissions. Without the full cooperation of the world's second-biggest emitter behind China, any broad agreement to address global warming by the 192 nations gathered in Copenhagen will simply fall apart, they say.

"Unless the U.S. has the political will to make the necessary sacrifices, none of this will work," said Sudanese diplomat Lumumba Di-Aping, the lead representative for more than 130 developing nations at the summit.

Obama has proposed cutting greenhouse gas emissions by about 17% by 2020, compared with levels in 2005. He says a firm cap on carbon dioxide produced by U.S. industry, as mandated by a House bill passed in June, will help slow global warming and provide an incentive for companies to invest in cleaner energy. The Senate is to debate an energy bill early next year.

"There are many (U.S.) companies and investors … waiting for Congress to act, waiting for some certainty before they make these investments," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said. He said Chinese companies were moving ahead with "green" technology: "If we don't watch out … they'll end up with all those jobs."

Even Republicans who say global warming may be a problem, including Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., say a cap on carbon emissions would damage the U.S. economy by pushing up energy prices. Carbon emitters such as power plants and factories would have to pay for permits to keep burning coal and oil at the same levels. The cost, Republicans say, would be passed on to consumers in higher energy bills.

The U.S. debate is one of many issues unresolved as the summit enters its second week....

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei cautioned countries against trying to save face at the summit by agreeing on goals far into the future — such as in 2050. "If you cannot deliver on the short term or medium term, you cannot talk about the long term," the minister said Friday. By 2050, he said, "most of us will not be here anymore."

SOURCE

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