Monday
Dec192011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Upwardly mobile
Dec 19, 2011 Climate: Surface The C3 Headlines site has an interesting analysis of the adjustments made to NOAA's surface temperature records. We have seen this kind of thing before: the adjustments to the series produce cooling at the start of the series and warming at the end.
I think this kind of thing must set alarm bells ringing among reputable scientists.
(Of course, this doesn't mean that it hasn't warmed; only that the trend may be being exaggerated.)
Reader Comments (100)
Mattau, I counted 51 papers, although I'm not sure if they're all peer reviewed and in scientific journals. For me, and BBD, there is one significant paper, it's one he wrote in 2007 and it's editors were Jones and Bradley, of FOIA refusal fame and accusing someone who quotes you 18 time in the text and cites you 13 times, as plagiarising your work frame. (Although the Bradley person is willing to drop the plagiarism accusation if Wegman takes his work out of the Library of Congress, which of course Dr. Wegman cannot do). Nice people, and neither of them debunked, despite clear evidence that their work doesn't reach the highest standards required in any way whatsoever. But Dr. Ball, well he's "debunked" as not being a climatologist, so why, I ask myself, should two "eminent" climatologists bother to edit his work for him.
Do we have an agreed-upon definition of "climatologist"?
Empirically, climatologists seem to be failed scientists of some sort, who don't know much about statistics or physics but who know what they like. Will that do?
Do we have an agreed-upon definition of "climatologist"?
2 D's at A Level does it at UEA
University of Easy Access as Delingpole remarked ;)
geronimo
I deliberately omitted all the publications that were not recognisable as climate-related.
I don't know how many were "peer-reviewed" or in scientific journals and frankly I'm not really bothered .I said nothing in my reply to ThePowerofX about where they were published
BBD's original beef was that he could only find four publications; I counted thirty and I stand by that.
(Note the use of demountable goalposts — as ever)
Do we have an agreed-upon definition of "climatologist"?
2 D's at A Level does it at the University of Easy Access' Creative wRiting Unit.
Since 'climatology' as a field only emerged from the primeval swamp about twenty years ago, it is unlikely that anyone over the age of forty five has a doctorate in 'climatology'.
Not that such a qualification would be worth much anyway - a combination of dodgy stats with political activism examined by older folks who hadn't studied a proper science themselves.
This is a bit of record in downward adjusting, a full 1°C in 1850 with the help of P. Jones:
Int. J. Climatol. 26: 1777–1802 (2006)
Here is the revealing figure
"Do we have an agreed-upon definition of "climatologist"? "
Doesn't matter, you can simply be a "climatologer". Something along the lines of a Tamino.
"it is unlikely that anyone over the age of forty five has a doctorate in 'climatology'."
Hansen, for example is an astrophysicist.
Mike
You were strongly implying that Ball has a large body of work published in the reviewed climate journals. He doesn't.
Christmas Pantomime
"Tim Ball is a Climatologist"
No he isn't
Yes he is
No he isn't
Yes he is
Gets boring after a while but it keeps the toddlers amused ;)
BBD
Would you care to comment on the only pertinent item in the headpost link concerning Professor Ball (allow me the curious antiquainted chivalrous custom which honours academic chairs, and military ranks, for life), which is
Is it common to constantly revise historical empirical evidence? Here is his response:
"Absolutely Not. There are adjustments to the raw data done by each nation when it collects the data. For me there are even questions about this, but it means that what goes to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and then to the Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) and used as “raw data” is already adjusted. Post-collection adjustments are unnecessary and unacceptable."
Latimer Alder;
Since 'climatology' as a field only emerged from the primeval swamp about twenty years ago, it is unlikely that anyone over the age of forty five has a doctorate in 'climatology'.
I totally agree with you. I have been working in the (biomedical) life sciences area for over 30 years and have seen a rising number of new 'ologies and 'omics within that field. The trouble is that most of the 'stars' of the new divisions tend to be those who are plainly incompetent, or failed to make the grade in established fields and moved on to pastures new where they could make up the rules as they go along. The result being that it takes a few decades for the genuine 'new scientists' to shake out the scheissters and snake-oil peddlers
Pharos
Ball is, as usual, huffing and puffing. The C3 article is a smear of NOAA/NCDC and Ball happily contributes. There is no discussion at all in the article as to why these adjustments are being made. Just a baseless claim that:
This somewhat unhinged opener ('Obama "science" FFS) tells you all you need to know about the misinformation that follows.
Where's the evidence of 'fraud'? In my book, the C3 article is libellous and Ball's endorsement simply reveals what most people already know - he's biased and unreliable.
another post successfully derailed by a monomaniac...
THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT TIM BALL
THIS THREAD IS ABOUT ALWAYS-COUNTERCLOCKWISE HISTORICAL TEMPERATURE TREND ADJUSTMENTS
IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT TIM BALL'S SCHOOLING PLEASE DO IT OUTSIDE OF MY INBOX
ALL OF YOU FALLING FOR THE NTH TIME FOR BBD'S THREAD HIJACKING TRICK PLEASE FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO WITH YOUR LIVES
BETTER ONE BBD AND TEN ZDB'S THAN ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE RESPONDING TO THEM DESPITE PERFECTLY KNOWING IT'S TOTALLY USELESS
OK now I've said it! :-)
NIWA was pushing the limits of that magic tool "homogenization" and got sued: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4026330/Niwa-sued-over-data-accuracy
ZAMG is being doing the same in the Alps, but nobody cared because ski slopes are still full.
Now NOAA is on the same path.
The problem with having so many places with trends above the average is that to keep the average some other places are at risk of imminent glaciation.
BBD
You are off form tonight. I much preferred your performance over at Kloor's.
I dont think Prescott really minded being christened 2 Jags.
So in the spirit of seasonal merriment I propose you for the honorary climatology title - '3 degrees BBD'
Re post 137 on
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2011/12/14/when-life-gets-in-the-way/comment-page-4/#comment-92342
Please take further comments about Tim Ball to the Discussion thread.
Maurizio
You're right, of course, and I apologise.
My only excuse is that I tried to take issue with a snide comment by one poster. I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition.
Chorus:- Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
I'll just go and sit in my comfy chair then.
But I'm afraid the yorkshire terrier will be back, snapping at my heels and with his poodle trotting along behind yapping.
Dec 19, 2011 at 8:17 PM was essentially about the C3 article. I note that nobody has chosen to respond to the core points raised.
@Dec 19, 2011 at 7:26 PM | Unregistered CommenterPatagon
I have seen that sort of thing somewhere else
Here is just one record in Australia that is extrapolated over conservatively 1M sqr km, 15% of Australia's land mass. (more than twice the land area of Spain)
Actually it is two stations 12km apart and 63mtetres different in altitude.
Because of the different micro climates here is a comparison of Jan & July,
My sister attended the University of Winnipeg while Dr. Tim Ball taught there.
BBD needs to know that in North America, some departments and fields are so small that they are collected into larger ones - for instance, a small 1100 student "university" I attended, very strong in languages, had only "Modern Languages" and "Classics" departments (with all of two professors, reduced to one by death), while the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, which I also attended, had departments for German and Scandinavian languages that were as large as any others in modern languages like Spanish and Portuguese, and so on.
Likewise in geography. A college with few thousand students will have one cultural geographer and one teaching physical geography, if it is lucky have geography at all. Little Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin did not have any - despite having contributed more Harvard University presidents than any institution outside of Harvard itself. It was a matter of focus and priorities.
Geography itself, much like art history, anthropology, and sociology still struggles with being a late add-on to academe, with German academic origins - hence going undersupported and underrecognized - something the late Ernst Gombrich struggled with in bringing the subject of art history to the University of London in the 1930s, after many decades of dedicated, and admirably British, amateurism in the field.
Thus, physical geography might break down into geology, ecology (or biogeography today), oceanography, meteorology, and climatology (if that) - four or five posts. But typically not even the latter. "Climatology" is the new mania, as much a product of political demand as "Security Management and Terrorism Studies" has been in the past decade.
I recall Tim Ball once mentioning that his contrarianism on climate brought static from his 9 (or 11) departmental colleagues. This number sounds about right for the kind of breakdown between physical and cultural geography I've suggested above for a moderately sized university like the University of Winnipeg.
My friends at league leading geography departments like Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, are huge at over 20 or 30 - and thus much more specialized, more research oriented, and graduate (or post-graduate) focused. I'm sure Winnipeg's geography department produced its share of master's students, but few PhDs like these other, bigger factories.
I also recall Tim Ball writing that Hubert Lamb at UEA helped him out with his doctoral thesis at the University of London. Anyone who knows their history of climatology knows that Lamb is one of the founding giants of the field (the first director of the CRU), much like Reid Bryson in meteorology was at Wisconsin. When a scientist has cred like that, BBD is churlish in the extreme to dispute Ball's credentials.
writes Dr. Tim Ball.
SOURCE
There are fewer than 100 PhD degreed "climatologists" in all of North America. Whatever your views, Tim Ball is one of them.
Well, I believe our host has gone to bed - meanwhile, I failed to read page two of these comments before I composed my defense of Dr. Ball - my apologies to our host Andrew (at 8:37).
Have I missed something? Why _is_ it getting colder in the past?
What was wrong with those old thermometers?
Orson, good post.
Heide,
Due to the increasing uncertainty attributed to the data the further back in time you look from the modern era any particular theory can suggest a reason for a desired trend, they will all have the same uncertainty though.
As time progresses and technology becomes more accurate in accumulating data future scientists, who will no doubt believe that their current understanding over rules their predecessors, will attribute more uncertainty to the current readings and probably produce graphs based on the latest models. The theory that wins the day and sets the past data as uncontroversial will have the model that can accurately forecast future data.
LB
Historical data is being revised downwards. Modern data is being revised upwards. One consequence of this methodology in introducing a false upward trend over the entire record is that to maintain such a trend into the future where the modern data becomes historical data such data may have to be revised downwards. We need to realise and make others realise that continually adjusting the past to suit a moden narrative is wholy fraudulent.
We need to know what is going on with these adjustments. At the moment we have a black box - raw data goes in, adjusted data comes out, and only a few know what is going inside the balck box. That is wrong.
Mac,
Data adjustments will continue as part of the normal process of fine tuning models to achieve an end result that accurately portrays the temperature record and forecasts with some degree of accuracy, future temperatures. With the current known unknowns even a reported consensus opinion is still an opinion and is still decades away from the accuracy required to base any scientific certainty upon.
Once you realise that the agenda of a particular theory over another is more political than scientific then you will realise that those who are the most aggressive and vociferous in promoting that theory, usually on the bloggs, are the ones that should be ignored the most. You probably know a good example of this.
MSM reporting falls into a category of it's own, one of pure reporting laziness and potential for satisfying the needs of viewers/readers/listeners. If FOIA releases part 3 and it has potential to topple major players, politically or scientifically, then make no mistake the MSM will crucify those that it has supported in the past.
The political ramifications of the past few years just goes to show that in Europe, as an example, the quality of representation that we have is absolutely abysmal. Whatever background politics you believe in it is a damming fact that the interests of our representatives are more important than those they represent with the possibly of too few exceptions.
Data integrity issues with regard NOAA/NCDC adjustments for the US records are known, but not fully known or even explained - they never are. We know that changes with regard the NOAA/NCDC urbanisation methodology have introduced an additional overall warming of 0.5C in the US record. When you are dealing in tenths of degree, 0.5C is one hell of an adjustment. Again we always get an increasing upward trend, never a downward trend.
Adjusting the past to suit a modern narrative is fraud. Climate revisionism is not scientifically acceptable until it is fully explained and has survived criticism. We are simpy dealing with NOAA dogman.
See this example for GISS US temperature. 1940s massaged down, 2000 up.
And they are still at it, in the latest version of HADCRUT which will be called HADCRUT4, see this Met Office document.
"The update to the data set has adjusted the annual temperature anomalies in comparison to the previous version of the dataset. Most notably, the inclusion of new bias adjustments for marine data has resulted in a warming in the mid 20th century, relative to HadCRUT3."
Recall climategate email 2640, "It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip"
and meanwhile the computed temperature trends continue to suggest that the climate is insufficiently aware of the reality of the "physics" of "global warming"
diogenes
Ah, no.
You need to do some further reading.
diogenes,
The next ten years will be very telling as the solar influence becomes observationally more apparent.
BBD...please do not feed me that curve-fitting bullshit. All they effectively say is that the world would be much warmer if our models had not by chance excluded these things we did not know about. Grant Foster alias Tamino and Rahmsdorf - the idiotarian. Conclusion - the GCMs should be retuned. However, word on the street is that GCMs for the next round of reports have higher sensitivities.
diogenes
'Curve-fitting bullshit'? So you haven't read the paper. Well, if you won't look, you won't learn.
The difference between you and me is that I would have read it and tried to find flaws in the methodology.
You have a good think about that. It's important.
I read that paper.....time wasted when i could have been reading Fiesta magazine
their paper is junk. Did you read it? Does it contain any science? It amounts to ...if i change this parameter in this series and that parameter in that series and invent a set of adjustments for other unmeasured parameters then everything matches up.
And? not convinced
Mike,
'Debunked' in alarmist-speak means "We didn't like what he said, ergo he is wrong. Got that? Good!"
I also see the use of the word 'eviscerated'. As in, "X simply eviscerated Y with his peer-reviewed paper'.
eviscerated: meaning, said lots of boastful things that are so impressive that he took his own breath away.
I propose a new use for another meaningless term: peer-reviewed. As in, "Man, that X,...he simply peer-reviewed that crap out of Y. I hope Y recovers from somehow."
diogenes
As I said, you didn't read the paper (or didn't take the time to understand the methodology clearly, which amounts to the same thing).
If you don't look, you don't learn. That's why you'll be stuck here in the dark for the foreseeable future.
DNFTT
matthu
No, you mean:
DNEATE
(Do Not Examine All The Evidence)
;-)
The paper BBD refers to absolutely avoids any mention of adjustments which may have been made to data sets before analysis i.e. precisely those adjustments which are the topic of this thread.
BBD is being either unnecessarily provocative in expecting us to believe that he would have been capable of finding flaws in the methodology of a paper relying on mathematical statistics or presumptive in expecting us to divert this thread to follow another of his unwelcome diatribes.
DNFTT
matthu
The article on which this thread comments accuses the staff at NOAA of scientific malpractice (the term used is 'fraud' but I think we know what is meant).
Myself aside, nobody on this thread has asked for evidence of malpractice. There have been brief mentions of the reasons why NOAA might make adjustments, but no discussion at all as to whether the C3 article is actually libellous, unsupported nonsense.
By continuing in this vein, you are engaging in the real misdirection here. Not me.
I was only drawoing your attention back to the referenced article, which begins:
The evidence of malpractice is widespread: what remains is to have the evidence tested.
For example, there are numerous instances e.g. in the climategate emails where scientists have seemed intent on removing perceived blips or 'anomalies' or unexplained trends. Whereas a 'normal' scientist might set out to explain a blip, climate scientists prefer to drop measurements or introduce bodges in order to 'massage' the data ('massage' here has a commonly accepted statistical interpretation) and get rid of the blip.
Unless each and every such adjustment is suitably documented and justified, sceptics will jump on the fact that there is an overwhelming opportunity for introduction of bias. (This avenue for bias has frequently been documented in other disciplines - why not climate science? Scientists have certainly not done enough to dispel the suspicion of bias.)
When the very large number and frequency of these adjustments are exposed, as well as the fact that they are almost entirely in an 'anti-clockwise' direction, then the possibility of fake warming arises.
When the possibility of fake warming is accompanied by numerous documented attempts to obstruct FOI requests and hide the fact that the adjusted series can no longer be reproduced from the raw data - then a question of fraud arises.
The evidence is there.
It should be recognised that every other scientist trying to explain temperatures by considering factors other than CO2 must now be at a distinct and unfair disadvantage because so many 'blips' (which might otherwise have corresponded with some factor other than the one assumed by e.g. CRU) have been removed and can no longer be identified as having been removed because the raw data has been overwritten and lost.
matthu
Then why didn't BEST uncover the 'fraud' behind the 'fake warming'?
Why does BEST vs CRUTEM3 1900 - present (smoothed with annual mean for readability only) look like this?
More fraud? More fake warming? Or perhaps you are mistaken to accuse NOAA of scientific malpractice?
BBD - if scientists make thousands of undocumented adjustments that is unprofessional. Unreproducible. Bad science.
If they also try to conceal the fact that they have done so, that (to my mind) is malpractice.
If at the same time it costs me a lot of money, that's pretty close to fraud.
Whether or not their data agrees with any other methodology is irrelevant.
matthu
Oh come on. If NOAA or CRU were fiddling the data, then BEST would have showed it up. Instead, the opposite happened and the conspiracy theory got a bullet in the head. You are going to have to adapt to the new reality ;-)
There is no IF about it.
The fact that any recorded number or numbers need to be adjusted means the number as recorded has no meaning for the intended use. So much for data integrity.
Andrew
I see you have no answers ;-)
'Tis (always) the Season for Bluster...
;-)