Bishop Hill Obamas housekarls dance to his warming tune
Jun 4, 2015 Climate: Oceans Climate: Surface Over the last few days I have been copied in on a great deal of correspondence about a new paper in Science from Tom Karl and colleagues, which has "blatant act of political propaganda" written all over it. The claim is that the pause in surface temperature rises is an artefact of the data and that a great deal of jiggery pokery is peformed on the numbers it is possible to get a graph that shows continued warming. The pause is no more.
This could only be written with Paris in mind.
Fortunately, Science distributed the paper to journalists sufficiently early for it to be widely circulated and quite a few people have now had a look. Some of them have even stopped laughing for long enough to write down their thoughts.
GWPF have a lengthy press release here, examining each of the eleven (!!) errors in the surface temperature records that Karl et al claim that nobody else has noticed before. It points out that the authors have decided that Argo sea surface temperature data can be ignored because it's not surface data (it's taken at 5m depth). Instead they prefer measurements from buoys and ships (from up to 15m down!) which they then adjust. They also apply a completely implausible uplift to sea temperatures during the last few decades because, it is alleged, methods of SST measurement have been changing. To call the paper, as GWPF do, "a highly speculative and slight paper that produces a statistically marginal result by cherry-picking time intervals" seems to be a masterful piece of British understatement.
Meanwhile, stateside, Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts are doing a splendid job in unravelling what is going on. In particular their Figure 4 showing how adjustments to the sea surface data are producing warming in the present and cooling in the past are astonishing, as is Figure 5, which shows how each iteration of the dataset gradually increases the amount of warming and cooling added. The also describe how the pre-hiatus period has been cooled, so that it looks like what was previously a hiatus is now a period of warming. Almost unbelievably, their largest changes to the data happen in the last few decades, when the raw data is best.
Desperate, desperate stuff and a sad day for science.
Reader Comments (194)
Those scoundrels at NOAA are once again conspiring to cover up the actual warming crisis by adjusting down the amount of warming that has occurred in the last century! Just look at their Figure 2!
http://s17.postimg.org/epbuz820f/Screen_Shot_2015_06_04_at_11_19_59_PM.png
You mean the way they downplay the pre 50s mostly natural warming but slip in a bit of modern, 'climate change' man made warming?
Heh!
Good one golf Charlie.
It brings to mind many other possibilities for their Parisian meals than just 'cold soup'.
Such as no water served with meals unless requested.
No ice in drinks. Or carved chunks of ice on display.
No meat.
And that soup? Definitely should be algae soup, served cold. (anthropogenic heat is baddd)
Blimey EM. ZDB and ZH all posting on one item, the
troopstrolls have been mobilised.They think it's a tonic for the troops. But in reality they might just as well move their Paris meeting to Waterloo.
Due to be discussed imminently on Radio 4 Today programme...
Tom Karl on radio 4 now, and keith Shine claiming its an important paper.
Hints of scepticism from Justin Webb.
"people are going to say its too convenient"
More jaw-dropping, made-to-order 'science' I suspect and suppose. 'They' wanted rid of the MWP, and up pops Mann et al. with their attempt at that, one that was both risible and yet successful from a PR point of view. They cared not for the local warming peak in the middle of the 20th Century, and that has been whittled away with 'no-end-yet-in-sight' adjustments. They were dismayed at the disastrous cost-benefit ratios of their schemes, and along comes Stern, like a bespoke tailor bowing to a demanding customer, to create discount rates that fitted the schemers well despite being absurd to all with eyes to see. The flat-lining of the global mean temperature confection has been a great setback, and so of course the jobbing-analysts have been making lots of attempts to do away with it, or dismiss it, or account for it in some politically-correct way. So far none have survived very long, often shredded in short-order by un- or under-funded clingers to decent science. Who would care to bet on this latest attempt to get the CO2 Carnival's lights back on?
Yes it was unbelievable to hear a bbc type airing skeptical points. Webb actually went even beyond, suggesting that if the data had been incomplete until yesterday, it might as well be incomplete now, and awaiting further updating.
Also Shine was extremely subdued. I wonder if the underlying message is that Karl's work is rubbish but none has the bad manners to say it in public.
EM. "You sceptics have been saying this for years. One would think you would be pleased to have it confirmed."
Actually it isn't confirmed, it's been lowered in a paper by some climate scientist activists trying to explain the inexplicable slowdown in temperature rise concomitant with a surge in CO2 emissions.The previous 66 papers tried, laughably, to prove the heat was still in the system but not manifesting itself in atmospheric temperatures. It is only reasonable in climate science where the researchers search for white swans to switch tack and lower previous temperatures to remove the embarrassing carbuncle on the face of climate science.
I doubt the paper will stand the test of time and prove to be a case of scientific premature ejaculation in terms of making any impact at the Paris meeting
'This could only be written with Paris in mind.'
But do the authors - and the BBC and all the other commentators who will doubtless be touting this 'defeat of the sceptics' for the next six months - really think that it (and other 'it's worse than we thought' scare stories) will make a difference at Paris? The reason Paris will fail to produce their wished-for legally binding, global emission reduction deal is that China, India and other so-called developing countries regard economic growth and poverty alleviation as more important than emission reduction. It's got nothing to do with their views on AGW.
Omnologos, yes I expect many climate scientists think the paper is nonsense but as usual cannot bring themselves to say so publicly ("circling the wagons")
Perhaps "science whore" is the term we've been looking for.
Yes I read these dodgy reports.
However with Obama in the white house and the EU in our Parliament its business as usual, all these crooks have to do is sit tight and get their complicit MSM to print this garbage.
Sceptics win the battles but the establishment keep changing the rules.
This lie will not end until the lights go out.
IPCC statement
Gavin Schmidt
UKMO - quoted in the Guardian
Policy makers be aware, the science as spoken by the leading agencies in the world.
The economies of nations are dependent upon the interpretation of data relying on accuracy to 100ths of a degree from instrumentation with accuracy at best of 10ths of a degree.
This is the relevance of the fiasco that has been perpetuated for the the last 30 years.
Anyone in a position of budgetary or political responsibility that pays credence to reasons for de-carbonisation being a priority over serious issues such as poverty needs to find a new career path.
The sham is busted, the populace is now self aware and indignant.
Peter Stott of the Met Office says in the Guardian that NOAA's work must be true because they are doing similar work (unpublished) that has NOAA's results within his uncertainties. What has science come to.
Jun 4, 2015 at 7:27 PM | cebe
=============================================
Quite. "Our errors match yours, so we must both be right". WTF?
In 2009, Karl gave an interview to "earthsky".
http://earthsky.org/earth/thomas-karl-humans-changing-atmosphere-in-ways-never-seen-on-this-planet
Maybe this "paper" is what he meant, when he said: "There’s likely to be some surprises in the future."
He is on record as saying,
“Internationally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), is the most senior and authoritative body providing scientific advice to global policy makers.”
He was one of the reviewers, along with Gavin Schmidt and Susan Solomon, of the EPA's Endangerment Finding Technical Support Document, which gave Lisa Jackson free reign to produce draconian regulations to control the "pollutant" CO2.
More on the EPA Endangerment Finding here:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/the_un_states_epa.html
International Pantomime of Climate Change reopens in Paris for the Christmas Season.
"Its stopped getting warmer!"
"Oh no it hasn't!"
"Oh yes it has!"
You can book early, to avoid disappointment with next years figures.
Karioki: singing along with O'barmy's tune.
The reason Paris will fail to produce their wished-for legally binding, global emission reduction deal is that China, India and other so-called developing countries regard economic growth and poverty alleviation as more important than emission reduction. It's got nothing to do with their views on AGW.
Jun 5, 2015 at 8:58 AM | Robin Guenier
I agree 100% on what you say ref the developing world but I think with Obama looking for a legacy and the undoubted idiocy of EU politicians there is scope for a suicidal one sided deal. Remember Obama will not be around to pick up any pieces so a ticking bomb is of no concern to him as demonstrated by his China deal, and the EU is the EU.
BoFA: 'there is scope for a suicidal one sided deal'
But a 'one sided deal' isn't a deal. Paris will fail if the developing economies decline to sign. Which they won't - however much new 'proof' of CAGW is promulgated over the next few months.
Paris will fail.
It will fail because China is starting to lend the money to developing countries, that the USA, EU and fellow ecociders have declined. It is classic FIFA tactics, and in this instance, I support China.
How can Obama hope to regain the trust of the developing world now? Obama's legacy to the world, will be handing over the USA's role as dominant world power, to China.
China is unlikely to be very generous, in their thanks to the Green Blob.
“Using updated and corrected temperature observations…” was the point at which I decided the whole exercise was a load of K9P.
Commenting on blogs is the queen of solitary pursuits, but I find it's far more satisfying to practice it in public, which is why I've been commenting under an article by one of the paper's authors at
The rest of the thread is even better.http://theconversation.com/improved-data-set-shows-no-global-warming-hiatus-42807
My first comment has been removed for the crime of linking to a source considered “unreliable” by the moderators (WUWT), so the thread now begins:
All this stuff from the Alarmists about a hiatus not being the same as a halt, pause, or stop, is resolved with a single paper saying it is as bad as evah.
Or is it that the paper is bad as evah?
Any chance that Blatter could be the new chair of the IPCC? They need someone with a track record of data manipulation, and exploiting any situation for personal gain. The IPCC have a proven track record, and they would not want standards slipping now.
Question - when does something highly adjusted stop being a measurement and start being a proxy?
Are we all just supposed to ignore the two satellite datasets that still show a clear plateau?
JamesG
I'm sorry, what plateau was that? This is the UAH data , perhaps you can indicate when the pause started and when it stopped
Patchy said there was a pause.
His reputation could be damaged by this.
Entropic Man, nothing seems to fit the Hockey Stick. What is wrong with the Hockey Stick?
"Desperate, desperate stuff and a sad day for science."
On the contrary I think it's a great day for science. On the one hand mainstream climate science appears to be nailing its colours to the mast of this new study, and on the other sceptics believe it to be trivially debunkable. Both can't be right.
If it's debunked as easily as sceptics believe then mainstream climate science will be dealt a severe blow that it will not be able to sweep aside. However, if sceptics fail to debunk then their heaviest weapon against global warming orthodoxy - the hiatus - will be removed from the field.
I believe this study will have a similar scale and impact to Climategate, but it's yet to be decided against which "side".
@JamesG
...I'm sorry, what plateau was that? This is the UAH data , perhaps you can indicate when the pause started and when it stopped...
This is usually considered to be the pause...
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah-land/from:1970/to:2016/every/plot/uah/from:2002/to:2016/trend/plot/uah/from:1970/to:2016/trend
BoFA: 'there is scope for a suicidal one sided deal'
But a 'one sided deal' isn't a deal. Paris will fail if the developing economies decline to sign. Which they won't - however much new 'proof' of CAGW is promulgated over the next few months.
Jun 5, 2015 at 10:35 AM | Robin Guenier
What I mean by a one sided deal is one where the developing countries do not commit to any reductions so they can sign free from restraint and our loonies sign-up to further reductions. Obama did this with China already, what China signed up to is simply what will happen anyway as it is the normal development path. Our loonies in the EU have the Climate Change Act etc already in place, they just need to agreed to keep to the commitments and bung a few billion for the past pollution shame.
EM
One thing you could do is make sure before you post that you are using the same datasets for temperature as for trend!
You've got temps for land only and trend for lower trop. One of those things.
Try this. HADCRUT shows a (non-significant) increase from 2000 to 2014; RSS shows a decline; UAH shows a trend slower than its long-term.
All of which is pea under the thimble stuff. Karl et al appears to have shot itself in the foot. In its attempts to prove there is no hiatus, even though it is (at last) mainstream scientific understanding — aka a consensus! — that there is, it has opened the door to the argument that since their trend appears to be lower than previously the seriousness of global warming has been delayed.
Thermageddon is not on the cards within the lifetimes of at least the next four generations after ours. Not that it ever was in the real world. Only in X-Box™World.
But the REALLY annoying thing, folks, is that people will BELIEVE this stuff..!
Jun 5, 2015 at 1:09 PM | Unregistered Commenter Nick Milner
1) This paper adjusts data from buoys to match data from ships by 0.12°C. (See note below).
2) This paper also gives more weighting to buoy data because it is more reliable than ship data.
3) Both these decisions increase the produced rate of warming.
But 1 and 2 are mutually unjustifiable. Therefore the paper is easy to debunk logically.
The question is will the science community demand the paper's retraction or try to use it as convenient.
(Note: Should be 0.12 ±0.17°C but the choice was made at the made so... it ain't good science even to a 90% confidence level.)
Guido seems to have nailed it here.
Entropic Man
Are you outing yourself now as a pause-denier or do you really see no plateau in UAH? Try here for the full dataset with a helpful spline fit:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/05/uah-v6-0-global-temperature-update-for-april-2015-0-07-deg-c/
Now you cannot fail to see it can you?
And note that the big, big advantage of satellites is that you don't get to just invent your own personally biased SST from bucket adjustments, engine intakes, ship data, buoys plus big arbitrary & unphysical y-axis shifts. It just is what it is....
Dodgy Geezer
Thank you. It is rare to get a sensible answer here. :-)
Your post-2002 trend is certainly much flatter than the longer term trend.
Next problem; is the difference significant?
I do not have confidence limits for the UAH data. Estimating by eye, the internal variability looks consistent with 95% confidence limits of +/- 0.2C. I've added them to the graph.
The maximum difference between the two trend lines at present is less than 0.1C. On that basis the difference is too small to tell whether it is signal or noise. We are arguing about a difference which may be a real trend change or just noise. Either way it is way below 95% significant.
Forgive me if I remain unconvinced.
As noted by David Rose and others, the no-warming situation is within the confidence range of Karl's paper.
This is further evidence that EM is not here to honestly discuss the topic.
But, BoFA (1:36PM), if 'the developing countries do not commit to any reductions' that's hardly a 'deal'. Yes, of course something will be signed. But, as Kofi Annan said only a few weeks ago (LINK):
And that's not going to happen.Moreover Canada, Japan, Russia and Australia have made it clear they have no serious plans to reduce emissions (Kofi Annan again). And without Congress's backing (impossible) the US cannot commit to a binding agreement. In practice, that leaves only the EU - responsible for only about 10% of global emissions.
That's not much of a legacy for Obama. And - as I've noted already - more scare stories about CAGW are not going to change that. Paradoxically, by giving more ammunition to those who are shouting for vast sums as compensation from the evil West for causing the problem, I suspect they're likely to make any sort of agreement even more difficult.
geoffchambers@11:13 AM
yep... "improved data set" I can only surmise they've employed Cecilia Gimenez ..... to assist in "improving" the data.
My comment disappeared quite promptly - one of their flagship funders "The Alliance for Useful Evidence" is certainly getting their moneys worth- eh?
So the hiatus/pause/plateau was acknowledged worldwide by the climate science community, including the IPCC and is the main topic of research therein but EM, like Karl remains unconvinced: How anti-science, anti-consensus & denialist!
It is highly unscientific to adjust the observations to the expectations of models that can only be validated by these selfsame obs. Truly another example of confirmation bias - the scourge of scientific endeavour!
So who would have thought it? After all those decades of telling us that the temperature record was sound, all the hard working of people creating GISS and HADCRU, all those scientists who published papers about why there was a pause, moving huge computer resources to model the possible reasons.
All of it wasted. Its taken how many decades to finally discover that we need to add 0.12 degC to data etc etc? Have they ever thought about getting it right first time?
If ever there was evidence of confirmation bias, surely this is it. All this shows is that with the surface temperature datasets you can pretty much get away with proving anything you like, as Steve Goddard has been showing for years.
All of this is so easily countered. All this analysis shows is how unreliable all the previous work on surface temperature data. What we need to do is look at the satellite data. And they don't agree with this nonsense. The pause is still in there in the satellite data. Explain that away. And if you do, who's to say that someone won't come along next week and reverse the whole thing with yet another "correction". If they keep "correcting" the data and it always then fits the theory, why would anyone believe it?
Its all about the way the wind is blowing. In terms of AGW supporters, it looks like a Katabatic wind to me....
@entropic
.The maximum difference between the two trend lines at present is less than 0.1C. On that basis the difference is too small to tell whether it is signal or noise. We are arguing about a difference which may be a real trend change or just noise. Either way it is way below 95% significant.
Forgive me if I remain unconvinced...
The entire CAGW scare is well below any significance level! ALL the concern is based on projections of temperatures which have not occurred in reality, and ALL the data that we currently have is well within expected natural variation. The figures are minute, and well within all observational error bars.
This is accepted by all players on both sides - the warmist view is that the 1990s small rise in temperature is compatible with projections which suggest CO2 driving temperatures to high levels, and so we need to take action now to suppress future danger. The typical sceptical view is that these variations are essentially natural. (There are many sceptical positions, of course). If the temperature had:
a) continued rising
b) increased in strength as CO2 levels rose
then the warmist position would be much stronger. As it is, a diminution in rate of increase damages their position the more it diminishes and the longer it goes on for. It is this change of direction in rate rather than the (minute) absolute figures which is so damaging to the warmist cause.
Note also that a simple temperature increase is not evidence of CO2 driving. The Earth is coming out of the 'Little Ice Age', and so a gradual increase is to be expected. CO2 driving requires, as you know, INCREASING rates as the CO2 levels rise. "The Pause" is a shorthand way of saying that this is not happening.
Warmist supporters have tried three main defences:
1 - 'The Pause' is simply minor natural variation, temporarily masking an inexorable rise. But the longer it goes on, the less likely this is.
2 - The heat is there, but hidden in the ocean. Unfortunately, observational data does not support this.
3 - Most recently, the 'Pause' does not exist if you adjust the figures. This is beginning to look like adjusting reality to conform to theory....
Rather than destroy the pause, this paper will help the public develop some fondness and sentimental attraction towards it. I know I have grown quite attached to its continued existence. It reminds me of a bygone age, when science could be trusted.
Global Warming Alarmists appear to have misjudged public sympathy towards this endangered entity, and should have employed more psychiatrists and fraudsters, to give their top Scientivists the help they really needed.
That's Real Climate Science Progressives for you.
Omnologos,JamesG
Omnologos, now you've hurt my feelings.
This is an old argument, and one I have just discussed.The same confidence limits cover a range from no warming at all through to rapid warming . The time period is too short to distinguish between them with 95% confidence.Zero warming is possible, but not necessarily probable.
JamesG
Am I a pause denier?
Depends what you mean by pause.
If a pause is a temporary slowdown in surface warming rate due to internal varation, then a pause between 2002 and 2010 is a reasonable interpretation of the data, which I would accept
If a pause is a stopping of global warming, then I would not accept it. The imbalance between incoming over outgoing radiation continues, ice continues to melt and oceans continue to take up heat.
There is also the problem that the sceptic's traditional starting point at the peak of the 1987/88 El Nino is now fourth warmest in most datasets. It has been beaten by 2007, 2010 and 2015, and on present form by 2016 too. Any pause during the noughties is probably over.
As I said above, there is insufficient time and temperature difference to statistically distinguish any pause from the long term trend.
Briefly. Do I think there was a slowdown in surface warming? Possibly.
Did global warming stop? Probably not.
@entropic
....The maximum difference between the two trend lines at present is less than 0.1C....
Of course, you don't have to use UAH. GISTEMP will show:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1970/to:2016/every/plot/gistemp/from:2001/to:2016/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1970/to:2016/trend
and HADCRUT shows:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2016/every/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/to:2016/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2016/trend
while RSS will show:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1970/to:2016/every/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2016/trend/plot/rss/from:1970/to:2016/trend
All of these show a MUCH stronger difference than the set of figures you picked. I wonder why?
Dodgy Geezer
Do you have numbers and statistics to support your opinions?
It just struck me that this paper proves that the consensus is fake. When scientists don't even agree with their own temperature records from last week, there's no such thing as consensus.