This was published Wednesday on NRO. It seems that the temperature data upon which global warming is based – the data that shows a steep rise of 0.6 degrees +/- 0.2 degrees over the past 100 years or so – has disappeared. Author Patrick J Michaels picks up the story:
Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.
Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.
Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.
Back in the 80’s a climate research crew was put together tasked with the job of collating temperature data to see if the global climate had warmed. They used temperature data from weather stations, which was a problem because said stations weren’t set up originally for that purpose. Some were in parking lots where the sun heated the air higher than normal, some were in shade where temps would be lower. The researchers had to adjust the data and process it quite a bit. Eventually they spat out this result: an increase of 0.6 degrees plus or minus 0.2 degrees.
It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”
So far so good. The story gets interesting a few years later.
Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.
Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
Isn’t science actually all about publishing your data and process for the exact purpose of allowing others to replicate it to see if your results are correct? Not in climate science, apparently.
Then the story changed. In June 2009, Georgia Tech’s Peter Webster told Canadian researcher Stephen McIntyre that he had requested raw data, and Jones freely gave it to him. So McIntyre promptly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same data. Despite having been invited by the National Academy of Sciences to present his analyses of millennial temperatures, McIntyre was told that he couldn’t have the data because he wasn’t an “academic.” So his colleague Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, asked for the data. He was turned down, too.
Faced with a growing number of such requests, Jones refused them all, saying that there were “confidentiality” agreements regarding the data between CRU and nations that supplied the data. McIntyre’s blog readers then requested those agreements, country by country, but only a handful turned out to exist, mainly from Third World countries and written in very vague language.
Pressure for the data increased slowly. Then the Homework-Eating Dog appeared.
Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:
Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.
Meaning a big chunk of the original raw data is gone. Only the adjusted data exists now, apparently. Or maybe not.
If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?
All of this is much more than an academic spat. It now appears likely that the U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate legislation from its docket this fall — whereupon the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is going to step in and issue regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions. Unlike a law, which can’t be challenged on a scientific basis, a regulation can. If there are no data, there’s no science. U.S. taxpayers deserve to know the answer to the question posed above.
Remember, this is no minor statistical contretemps. The whole Climate Change movement is based in large part on those numbers. Numbers that now can’t be independently verified – we just have to take their word for it.
UPDATE: Handing over raw data seems to be perilous, no wonder the warmists don’t want to do it.
The tree ring data used to create Mann’s infamous “Hockey Stick” warming graph has been withheld for years. When they finally released it a researcher discovers the whole conclusion was based on samples from only ten trees. When all the other trees were plugged in, this was the result.
Mann should have been smart and lost that data years ago.
In other news, it looks like the much heralded Copenhagen Climate Summit is being talked down a bit.
And there’s this in last week’s New York Times, Steve:
Et tu, NYT? Selling Global Warming when the globe ain’t – or is even cooling could be a rough job.
The whole Climate Change movement is based in large part on those numbers.
Uh-huh. Right. Whatever.
So tell us, how exactly does this conspiracy to hide the truth make the ice-caps melt? I’m fascinated.
Um, Antarctic ice is growing, not shrinking. And your link is just Greenland which is an ice cap, not “the ice caps”.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s own figures, world sea ice in April 2008 reached “unprecedented” levels for the month of April. The World Meteorlogical Organization (WMO) went to declare 2008 the coolest since 2000. Moreover, the WMO reports that the fall in the global mean temperature since 1998 is not just affecting the polar ice caps either, it is also affecting glaciers elsewhere.
Grrenland is “regional”, not “Global”, Phooey, and this is likely the reason they canned the label “Global Warming” (focus on the root word “Globe” as in all of the planet) and switched to “Climate Change”.
You tell the Beast how the globe is supposed to be warming when peak temps were half a century ago and in the past decade the world has actually cooled off a bit? And how can we be expected to measure it when the raw data can’t be confirmed and results can’t be replicated?
Copenhagen was never going to pan out to much anyway, Guru Steve, look at the shambles Kyoto ended up as.
Um, Antarctic ice is growing, not shrinking. And your link is just Greenland which is an ice cap, not “the ice caps”. ”
Uh-huh.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s own figures, world sea ice in April 2008 reached “unprecedented” levels for the month of April
Note the table at the bottom of this page
Trend, 1979-2008
– Arctic: Significant decrease of 4.1% (~500,000 km2; 193,000 mi2) per decade
– Antarctic: Small increase of 0.9% (~100,000 km2; 42,000 mi2) per decade
This is covered in greater deal here.
Nice try, HB…
Again you have issues with the concept of “Regional” vs “Global”. The Antarctic table you referred to shows a net increase of ice per decade with only the Wilkins ice sheet decreasing. The Wilkins is like Greenland in a sense, a portion of the overall. Of course it’s the one you guys fetishize over. Again, where is the plural “Ice Caps”? The biggest one hasn’t shrunk at all and continues to grow. And the Arctic is recovering (2008-9 saw the record highest winter ice pack thickness in 30 years and the 2009 summer minimum is higher than the the lows of 2007 and 2008) as temps continue to stabilize and begun dropping.
Nice try indeed, Phooey.
Again you have issues with the concept of “Regional” vs “Global”. The Antarctic table you referred to shows a net increase of ice per decade with only the Wilkins ice sheet decreasin
“Data suggest that since then, Arctic ice has been decreasing at an average rate of about 3 percent per decade, while Antarctic ice has increased by about 0.8 percent per decade.”
Last time I looked, the Artic and the Antarctic weren’t in the same region, hb. Now, maybe you’re using a different definition of “regional”, or maybe you’re blowing smoke.
Let’s get you back on track with what you were actually saying, Phooey. First off your original statement was “the ice caps are melting”. Caps = plural. So one has decreased in size since we began taking measurements way back in 1978 and the other is growing! And the decreasing one has slowed and is even beginning to recover. Last winter’s Arctic freeze actually set ice thicknesses back to the 1978 level! Meanwhile world temps have been stable for over a decade and are actually decreasing. And suddenly the raw temperature data is gone. Last time the Beast looked, one REGION of the globe has seen a decrease in ice thickness that’s ending now that temps are dropping and that means the GLOBE is warming?
Regional. Global.
Hey, your religion is your business, the Beast won’t try to argue you out it anymore. Faith can be a powerful force.
Let’s get you back on track with what you were actually saying
Uh-huh – so you realise you screwed up with the “regional” vs “global” bullshit, huh?
First off your original statement was “the ice caps are melting”. Caps = plural.
Right.
So one has decreased in size since we began taking measurements way back in 1978 and the other is growing!
Two teeny tiny minor little points:
i, My quote referred to SEA-ICE after you bought up SEA-ICE.
ii, After you bought up SEA-ICE, I quoted stats on SEA-ICE.
Now, I realise this is technically the same point twice, but I thought you might like seeing it more than once.
Meanwhile world temps have been stable for over a decade and are actually decreasing.
No, the world temperatures have not been stable for a decade.
What we seem to have (IIRC) is a 11 year cycle on top of a rising trend. At present, the two are going to be working against each other, masking the underlying global warming for the next five or six years. After that, things start getting hairy.
Phooey even the New York Times admits it.
Phooey’s logic is, is, well its like fungible. He flashes stuff here and there. He exchanges one point for another with no regard for liner thought. My friend Phooey – The sophomoric sophist!
Uh-huh. Well done on not being able to riposte based on facts.
You want coherent?
As it turns out, the UN just released the Climate Change Science Compendium 2009, which collates the latest research findings authoritatively for the benefit of policy-makers. Pages 25-26 demolish your original post quite nicely.
Of course, you’re not going to read it, since you’re not actually interested in the science.
Dude there is no need. The Beast has that covered already.
But you are correct in that it was a childish taunt.
No, pg, he does not.
Didn’t think you’d read it.
Sorry – page 26.
I looked at it. It is tastfully done. I have not studied it. But like I said, I was not trying to argue, just taunting.
Ok, I read it. No it dosen’t.
Uh-huh.
Your original post : It seems that the temperature data upon which global warming is based […] Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature
The report, p.26:
i, Regardless of your storm in a teacup about a scientist having or not having access to raw data (and it sounds very much like a typical wingnut blown out of proportion story), ocean temperatures are a more fundamental part of the global warming picture. they’re a far bigger heat sink than the atmosphere.
ii, They’ve been warming up. This can be shown via thermal expansion.
iii, Since 2007, more data has come in showing the contribution of this effect to sea level rise.
So for your conspiracy theory musings to have traction, you’d also have to figure out a way to explain the corroborating data about the more important engine for global climate change, ocean water temperatures.
Fail.
Not my post.
Sorry. Difficult to scroll up and down given how fast I have to type.
“So tell us, how exactly does this conspiracy to hide the truth make the ice-caps melt?”
Ice caps (plural) are melting? One is growing. The other has lost ice since we started measuring it in 1978 but that rate has slowed. And again, how does one event in the Arctic region of the Globe translate to warming to the entire globe? The globe warming is global warming. Ice melting in one of our two poles is a regional event.
And blaming the oceans isn’t going to help you. Witness this beauty:
We’ve been over this before. The raw data which you so scorned showed the oceans cooling. It wasn’t til the data was corrected by throwing out the warmest readings that the required warming showed up. Ah, the joys of “improved estimates” making up for “sparse data coverage”!
The Beast has added an update to his original post regarding the perils of releasing raw data. Check it out.
Ice caps (plural) are melting? One is growing. The other has lost ice since we started measuring it in 1978 but that rate has slowed.
And what, pray tell, is the combined result – a net loss or a net gain?
And again, how does one event in the Arctic region of the Globe translate to warming to the entire globe?
How exactly does one event in the Antarctic disprove the global data on warming?
We’ve been over this before. The raw data which you so scorned showed the oceans cooling. It wasn’t til the data was corrected by throwing out the warmest readings that the required warming showed up.
Ah, the conspiracy theory again. Feel free to explain how the observed sea level rise from thermal expansion showed up if the oceans are cooling…
As regards the “hockey stick” – see here.
So, HB, have you looked at that Climate Change Compnedium I linked to before?
And this covers the hockey stick debate in exhaustive detail:
In short, the science didn’t support the claim, the NRO is dishonest in still presenting it as a counter when the science has already been discussed and pulled to pieces, and you’re either being extremely naive or dishonest in citing it.
The NRO distorts and lies.
Your pet site neglected to mention that Mann based his whole theory on cherrypicked samples from TEN TO FIFTEEN TREES.
Straight from the horse’s mouth – here’s a chronology of the events (including prying the data from the HockeyStick Team) written yesterday by McKittrick himself:
And here are comments from McIntyre from the 27th of September:
Where are the lies again?
BTW – the Beast attempted to look at the Climate Compendium but the pretty pictures made the PDF file load like frozen molasses on his laptop. It was unreadable.
Your pet site neglected to mention that Mann based his whole theory on cherrypicked samples from TEN TO FIFTEEN TREES.
You seem to have overlooked this bit:
All from cherry picked trees undoubtedly. The Mann Hockeystick has been discredited for years. This puts the final nail in the coffin
HB, that is perhaps the weakest riposte I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen three year olds stick their fingers in their ears and shout “I’m not listening”.
“Upwards of a dozen”? wow! “Studies”, too. Golly. Did they check all ten trees? Well, check this out:
Logrollers all. Even the IPCC dropped Mann’s stick on the ice.