Willis Eschenbach received a message today that the CRU list of stations used is online at http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/landstations/ . The webpage says:
The file gives the locations and names of the 4138 stations used at some time (i.e. in the gridding that is used to produce CRUTEM3) during the period from 1851 to 2006. All these stations have adequate 30 year averages for 1961-90 as defined in Brohan et al. (2006). The 4138 total is lower than the 4349 value given as the starting point for Brohan et al. (2006) and used in the latest IPCC Report. A small number of stations have been removed during Brohan et al. (2006) because of the presence of duplicate data and insufficient coverage for the period 1961-90.
They say:
The numbers we use are listed in numerical order up to station number 988360. Up to this point, the numbers ending in zeroes are generally the WMO number (*10) in use for that station in the mid-1980s. Numbers not ending in a zero have generally been assigned by CRU or may have originated from other sources. Stations that are listed after number 988360 are stations for which CRU has assigned numbers, mostly beginning with 72 (so using spare country numbers not officially used by WMO) to 75 (corresponding to stations in the United States). Some WMO IDs have been updated in the 2000s.
It looks like the sixth digit is the GHCN identification. This seems to be the case with Marysville which I checked. They note:
The station temperature data are updated each month, together with some back data for the last couple of years. As the WMO IDs have not all been updated, we have a look-up Table which associates some current WMO station numbers with the earlier values we are using. Updates come from two principal sources [CLIMAT messages exchanged between National Meteorological Services (NMSs) and from the publication Monthly Climatic Data for the World]. Additional updates in near-real time (either monthly or annually) come directly from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Austria, the Nordic countries and a few others.
The look-up table doesn’t seem to be online.
Some aspects of HadCRU3 are easier to implement than GISS – earlier this year, I was able to track a gridcell series to the Barabinsk station data. With Hansen, you can never track anything. There’s a case for putting some of the Hansen mysteries on hiatus for a while and digging into CRU. The effort in understanding the individual stations is not lost since we’re mostly dealing with GHCN and MCDW data.
Climate Audit 
137 Comments
Awesome news Steve, and a boatload of work ahead. Willis, thank you.
As to deferring Hansen mysteries, well that has its pluses and minuses. Did Willis have any explanation given as to why the sudden change of heart by CRU?
Let me extend my congratulations to Willis, and to Steve, whose efforts led to
this event.
Pass the Knitting needles. My eyes have healed and need yet another wounding.
Just when Wizkid Kristen uncovers the B91s online, we get a peak at hadcru stuff.
I’m gunna stick on on the Opentemp Hansen stuff for now. But Willis, Congrats.
Not to shabby for a cowboy. ha.
RE: #3 ….. forget about seeing, get into your mind, everything’s better when the world is black … LOL! (Now there’s a reference …. 😆 )
Nice job Willis and Steve,
Looking through this list I see some real winners. Lewiston, Millinocket, Orno, Woodland, Acadia, Gardiner, and St Johnsbury TWICE! It’s like a shish-kabob of temperature stations!
RE 4.
Ok you win. Spill the source. ( I hate losing and refuse to use google to win)
Hey did you see the Tom waits YouTube I posted for SteFFFFan. Wonderful 1997 live
rendition of Waltzing matilda.
Hey, you need to weigh in on my contention that Microsite bias acts like shot noise.
I thought it rather brilliant.
Anthony, you say:
They refused to provide the data, but offered to provide the stations. I waited for them to do so. When none were forthcoming, I wrote them … no answer. So I wrote them again, and the station list was the result.
In passing, Anthony, congratulations on surfacestations, what a great thing. Now we need to enlist the assistance of the ROW …
w.
It appears that the data that Stewve M
#8 cut off for unknown reason, likely a misspell accidental cutoff code:
It appears that the data Steve McIntyre and others have been asking for is released only after
the gatekeepers have organized it to the point of being accurate enough to occupy, refute and confound
the auditors.
Of the 4138 stations, 2356 match directly to GHCN identification numbers, but 1782 (43%) do not match.
It will take a while to get a handle on why the IDs don’t match and what this implies. In some cases, the stations seem to be the same and the CRU ID is similar to the GHCN id up to some digits. For example the CRU id for Leech Lake MN is 720253, while the GHCN id for Leech Lake is 72755003. Why is there a difference? If Jones is importing GHCN versions, how does he keep track of it when the ID numbers are different?
In some cases, the CRU station name is the same as the GHCN station number but the station number and long-lat are slightly different. For example, the CRU ID for ISFJORD RADIO, Norway 78.0N 14.2E is 010050, while the GHCN number removing extra 0s as CRU) is 010051 78.07N 13.63E. So presumably the station moved at some point.
More extreme cases are exemplified in Norway by
11 NORWAY Glomfjord 011530 668 -140 39
13 NORWAY Kjoeremsgrendi 012350 621 -91 626
and a few others, where there isn’t any corresponding GHCN station. Now recall that Jones, on several occasions in the FOI process, gave as a reason for not providing data, that he obtained the data from GHCN and the data could be obtained there. While some data appears to match, the truth of Jones’ excuse for not providing the data through the FOI process appears highly questionable, to say the least. But hey, it’s climate science.
I wonder what they deleted in going from the reported 4349 to the present 4138. It’s reminiscent of HAnsen’s changing his source code for the public release (the change from SHAP to FILNET done for the public release is one that we know about). I don’t see why Jones shouldn’t obliged to release the identifications of the reported 4369 – warts and all.
Here’s what Brohan says about station counts:
This seems to say that 53 records were removed from the 4349 stations, but doesn’t explain why there are over 200 deletions.
Could the reason for the missing 211 be the following:
I’m a bit surprised that they have removed stations that have been used in the latest IPCC report. But, as is frequently stated, this is climate ‘science’.
Thank you Hadley for releasing the station list.
Congrat Willis ! Warwick Hugues and Doug Keenan will be delighted to finally know what’s under the hood.
For France (again), not a single rural station is in the CRU database. Stations like Mont-Ventoux, Mont-Aigoual, Pic du Midi (you can’t be more “rural”) which are in GISS have been removed.
15 stations over 19 are at airports. No wonder why there is a “trend”.
“….a collection of homogenised, quality-controlled, monthly-average temperatures….”
I am still interested in a good working definition of “homogenised” to understand what is applied under exactly what conditions by whom.
Elsie,
Clever nom de plume (unless it’s just an accident). For those not aware, a large US dairy used to use “Elsie the cow” as their mascot in advertisments. And of course the term “homogenised” comes from milk when it is treated to break up the oil globules to create micro globules which won’t rejoin within a time less than the shelf life of the milk. Translating that into climatease, the PTBs want a station product which can’t be teased apart with the shelf-life of the station data. Unfortunately for them, they’ve ignored MPSA (Massively Parallel Station Analysis).
#14. Demesure, you’re right about France. Jones has excluded EVERY French station classified by GHCN as rural.
There’s some interesting information on CRU in posts earlier this year under this category http://www.climateaudit.org/?cat=52
Tremendous breakthrough!!! Now, finally, some answers are not far off….
Congrats Steve/et.al.
#19. For all we know, everything is done according to the most scrupulous standards. I do not presume that every major study in this field is screwed up; I merely think that someone in the field should have done at least some minimal auditing of such important results. There’s a lot of analysis involved and I, for one, am already doing far too many different things.
Analysis is frustrated right away by their failure to provide the concordance that they refer to. I guess that will have to be requested next.
It’s hard to understand how this data set is supposed to connect to GHCN. In Hansen’s case, one can track GHCN data over to GISS. The problem at CRU is a little different. It’s hard to figure out the relationship, if any, between the CRU roster and the GHCN roster.
RE: #6 – Microsite bias as shot noise …. works for me.
Now, for another hint: “Lights Out!” sung by angry guys whose moniker suggest they may be from a south seas island but they are really not from there. 😆
#6 Steven mosher…Off Topic Didn’t find TW Waltzing
Matilda but other recent clips…Wait they had one from
1977…(If you met Joe Strummer as a private person it
doesn’t mean you like Tom Waits)(I assume SteFFFFan refers
to me??!) StaFFAN it is!! FFAN Meaning “Forever Furnishing
Actual Numbers”…But I downloaded “I don’t want to grow
old” TW on a bicycle dressed as a devil with a cape and
donkey teeth etc etc!!
ON TOPIC:I will compare CRU to Tu Tiempo and see if there
are any discrepancies…I suspect there will be some…
I’m not sure if this is relevant, but I stumbled across this FTP site while exploring the xx website:
ftp://ftp.cru.uea.ac.uk/data/
It seems to contain a set of CRUTEM1,2 and 3 files, but I don;t understand the format.
Steve: THis is gridded data; we’re looking for the input, not the output.
#23: I think that the data is explained on this page:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/
#23: I think that’s the gridded temperatures (the final products), not the station data.
AFAIK, the only CRU station data publicly available is located here (see also discussion here). I quickly checked and it seems that the station numbering is still the same. So cross checking those files (jonesnh.dat and jonessh.dat) against the current list should give the stations added/removed last fifteen years.
I’ve collated this information in the past. This will be useful to try to make a concordance of station IDs. I emailed Phil Jones asking for the concordance table referred to here and he promptly wrote back saying that he was in Australia and would revert next week. Whatever else one may say about Phil Jones, he is an indefatigable correspondent and his correspondence is unfailingly cordial. Kerry Emanuel is another very pleasant person. I was interviewed yesterday by some people who had recently interviewed Hansen. They said that Hansen refused to even utter my name.
I’m working on a concordance and have plausible matches for 3912, matching lats, longs and the first part of names. The concordance process is made more difficult by spelling errors “Sante Fe”, differences in lat, long etc.
#26
Steve – I think Hansen’s attitude might have something to do with the fact that your blog is filled to the brim with entries accusing him of systematically committing scientific fraud over a period of 20 years. I’m new to this, so don’t know all about the possible “He started it!” scenarios there are. But for a newcomer scientist, trying to understand the skeptic position, I’m pretty appalled. Erik
Maybe a stupid question, but what is the meaning of the dashes in the list? E.g.
#28. I have written no posts accusing Hansen of “systematically committing scientific fraud over a period of years”. Show me one.
As to your claim that this blog is “filed to the brim” with such accusations against Hansen, I’ve tried to snip or delete personal accusations using the word “fraud” when I’ve noticed them. I don;t think that such accusations are appropriate either. Could you identify some of the accusations that you have in mind – and, if the blog is “filled to the brim” with such accusations, that should be easy for you to do. I’m not asking that you identify every one, but just some that you’ve noticed. While I’ve explicitly stated that I am not responsible for views of posters, I do not wish such personal accusations to remain here and will make the effort to remove such statements by others.
#29. The dashes are just noise. I remove them in concordance program prior to name match attempts.
Looks like padding to fill out a fixed-length field.
28, Erik: just read this blog a little more, and you will understand. You will probably even become outraged, like me.
#26 Hope its the BBC. He got a solid 45 minutes if I recall. At least people will get to hear another viewpoint.. and as pointed out before this is just an auditing site (which sounds professional) rather than anti or pro etc..
#33: SteveS…. not exactly in a good mood? Here we have someone who, for all we know, is a person who has found some reason to think the skeptics may have a reasonable position, and has come looking for answers. As Steve Mc said, lets let him identify any gripes he has, and they can either be corrected or explained, and if neither of those options satisfies the newcomer, then you may pass judgement on trolling.
#34 sorry, looks like the post I referred to as #33 by SteveS got trimmed…a testament to how Steve Mc is actively fostering a positive environment for discussion.
UPDATE: Monday, October 1, 2007 – Record SH sea ice maximum and NH sea ice minimum see cryosphere today..At least someone is mentioning it. However, correction due to “sofware glitch” posted up to two days ago has been removed. What is happening?
#28 Erik Ramberg:
I agree that the replies in this blog are full of personal attacks. SteveMc is good about deleting the worst of them, but many indirect accusations and not-so-subtle suggestions remain. (Lots of the format “it’s funny that…” such as “Its funny that the errors that we;ve identified tend to increase the trends. ” by SteveMc at the top of the Russian Bias thread).
—
A couple of examples:
Russian Biase #47 (Demesure):
“Hansen has decided to keep the data that make an upper trend and discard those that dont.”
First Look at USHCN #68 (Robert Wood):
“For whatever reason, Hansen is busier than an Enron accountant in trying to cover his tracks? ”
“He is manifesting all the classic signs of an experimenter, not finding the result matches his publicly acclaimed theory, scurrying around in the decimal points to salvage his reputation.”
“Headline: NASA scientist fudges data.”
—
SteveMc, I am not faulting you for missing a few of the comments. Nevertheless, they do remain and they are offensive. Luckily for me, I’m the type to get motivated by that type of thing. Many of the worst replies have served as my motivation for OpenTemp (which by the way shows that GISTEMP does a great job of matching the best stations in the USA lower 48).
There is also a tendency here to personalize every analysis and demonize individuals. (GISTEMP adjustments are called Hansen adjustments, for example). It’s much easier to get a community angry at an individual than an algorithm. It’s a great method to increase readership, but strays from the traditional role of an auditor.
SteveMc and many others will undoubtedly be upset with me for this comment, as Hansen is upset about some of the other comments here.
Sloppy database: I see “UK” and “United Kingdom”
Erik Ramberg, #28 I believe you are mistaken on this matter. What I see Steve McIntyre doing is commenting or having issues with people’s actions and nothing else. Why Dr. Hansen frequently behaves so obstinently is certainly open to conjecture, but it’s been pretty clear I think that he is not acting in a very helpful manner. And I believe, that except for a few subjects, anyone is welcome here and can post whatever they want. For example, if Dr. Mann or Dr. Hansen wish to discuss the issues that Steve brings up, they are perfectly free to do so. Here. Tamino and Eli post here too, as do others with a different viewpoint. (Most people have a different viewpoint than I do, which is essentially neutral.)
One thing you will notice is that here at Climate Audit, it’s about that subject. It’s not a ‘pro’ or ‘con’ site, it’s a ‘what is going on’ site. Steve’s said he believes it’s warming. The question is the details, and are they getting them correctly. If they don’t like the scrutiny and fight against it, that’s certainly not Steve’s fault if they are upset about it. He leaves posts as they are unless they are egregious or on forbidden subjects.
You’ll notice Steve links to both Real Climate and World Climate Report, for example. (RC links neather to CA nor to WCR). He also links to GISS and William Connolly. They have interesting information to read at times.. He’s found errors in the records using statistical and other methods and helped to correct the data. (That it was “guaranteed” perfect and not needing to be looked at in the first place is a different matter….)
Enjoy your stay.
#28: A scientist who is not a skeptic is not a good scientist IMHO. A good scientist will let the data speak for itself, and even then be critical. This site is really about finding and following the data so that it can speak for itself, regardless of the comments and opinions.
RE: #38 – You are activiting trust issues again JohnV. I’ll be perfectly honest, I think you may be a spy from the “Killer AGW” lobby. SteveM, feel free to snip. I call ’em like I see ’em, I’m totally politically incorrect.
I feel the need to reiterate that. In my opinion, your actions are fair game for commentary. If those actions are such that you open yourself to conjecture, and people start brainstorming for the reasons behind those actions, you have brought it upon yourself.
If you are purposly evasive, people will ask why. Wonder why. Comment about why. Hopefully in a civil manner. But they might be wry or witty or saterical or with a tone of outrage or a tone of disbelief. Even still, sometimes people get unduly upset about things, and if you’re the one that caused them to overreact, perhaps you need to rethink how you do things.
#30
Steve – This is an example of the posts I find objectionable in a science based blog. You are certainly free to run the blog in your own style. I’ll read it more often if accusations of deception aren’t included. Erik
“Hansen Frees the Code”: #3, #25, #31, #55, #73, #82, #93,
“Hansen – Then and Now”: #1, #2, #4, #11, #13, #26, #34 ,#48, #54, #67, #72, #79
#42 SteveSadlov:
I’ve been completely open about who I am, where I am, and what I’m doing. If you don’t trust me, then my code and input data are available. Trust them. My opinion re AGW is irrelevant.
BTW, I have no idea why the HadCRU and GISTEMP programs are not also completely open. Hiding them gives the appearance of there being something to hide and that is never a good thing.
There is a lot of interesting and high-level discussion here, but sometimes the rhetoric and personal attacks go too far. Climate change is a very emotional and divisive issue for a lot of people.
RE: #44 , 45 would that a similar critique would be leveled toward the snarky, arrogant, holier than thou tone of RC, Rabbet Run, et al.
JohnV – yeah, you’re right. It is a very emotional thing. Where I get sucked in is that I am a former radical enviro, a former forumulator of key ideas which are now rife. It’s sort of nightmarish for me. As this youthful romantic, back in the early 80s, I dreamt of an ecological utopia. Now, older, wiser, and far more cynical about human nature, the madness of crowds, and, humbled by my own coming to grips with the 20th century, I now say, did I, and a cabal of others, create a Frankenstein monster? I fear we did. Now, as a pragmatic freedom loving environmentalist, I seek only the truth.
#44: A scientific activist is akin to a journalist activist. It is a conflict of interest in my opinion. Activists are in the political arena and scientists should not be. There is not a problem when activists use other people’s scientific data to support their activism. A huge problem occurs when a high profile scientist behaves as an activist, uses his or her own data to back up their activism, and then isn’t immediately forthcoming with his or her data and/or model.
#46, Steve, on March 11, 2007, I leveled the following analogous critique at RealClimate, the comment was accepted, and Gavin replied civilly:
I agree with John V and Erik Rambeg that the important work being done by this blog would obtain greater credibility and more widespread respect if there were fewer partisan comments. The best moments here are feats of pure analytic force and sustained focus on relevant details, not the frequent ad hominem rhetorical flourishes.
44, Erik: I try not to attack anyone on the personal level, only his/her work. But it gets difficult to maintain a disinterested impartial frame of mind when you see famous scientists that will not release their data and methodology. Or when they refuse to admit mistaaakes. S
Re: #44 Erik,
Well, since you included a message from me in your list (Hanson Frees the Code #82), I’d like to know precisely what you find objectionable about it? If you’ll read the message I was answering, I was actually supporting Hanson in that I was denying that he would try changing the code. Of course the Data has had some changes to it which are more than a little irksome, but changing the previous code is/was very unlikely.
#50
On second reading, I don’t find this so objectionable. Please pardon the implication.
I’m somewhat perplexed a bit about Hansen Frees #3 Are you objecting to this? I don’t see it. Is it not true, or did the numbering get changed?
Or #25 — It’s obvious that it’s the writer’s opinion. He thinks that statements about large parts of the Earth not mattering leads one to a certain conclusion about the statements. That’s certainly a discussion point, but it’s not over the top. Perhaps you are simply parsing things a little too closely.
Re: 28, 38 44-50
These postings are OT and Stve MC has replied in #30.
The issue set has certianly become emotional and divisive and there are seriously good reasons for that. From 1990 it was AGW, with “A” being the operative component. When it started becoming evident that key observational or proxy data either ran counter to that hypothesis or were seriously questionable, AGW was conveniently morphed into AGC [as in “Climate Change”].
Where things become seriously divisive is that exactly as its proponents had wanted, AGW/ACG has become the single most important political issue around. Where emotions get involved is in seeing the body politic happlessly making billion and trillion dollar policy decisions with far reaching negative economic consequences, and food crops being turned into environmentally questionable biofuels, causing food shortages in the third world. The former is my tax dollars being squandered supposedly to address a “problem” the existence of which remains unproven, and the latter is quite simply immoral.
So when Steve Mc/CA exposes questionable data, “science” or scientific practices, all of which are actively used to underpin the AGC story and fan the media hysteria, it’s bound to bring about some emotional reactions and even language you may not like.
The comments are not the problem, it’s the bogus science and questionable practices.
I don’t know how long everyone’s been doing the board thing (I go back to dial up BBS at 300 baud modem, yep) but yes there’s a few ways to go about things. I’ve probably seen them all and they all have strengths and weaknesses (and I am of course generalizing and over simplifying).
1. No comments
2. Comments moderated before posting and summarily dismissed if desired with no reason being given
3. Comments moderated before posting but with clear rules about what will not be accepted and why
4. Comments not moderated but heavily edited
5. Comments not moderated but lightly edited
6. Comments by-and-large left alone with some caveats
7. Comments only checked for hate-speach, obscene subjects and foul language
8. Free-for-all
What else did anyone expect with open discussion by frequently anonymous people from multiple countries on an emotional and contentious issue? (I think it’s far more civil here, and less personal, than lots of other blogs.) 1 is no discussion. 8 is often bad. 6 is the way to do it, IMO. All you have to do is hang out at the top 10 climate science related blogs for a few topics and reply sessions, and you can see how it is the other ways.
Gavin’s answer to your post Michael: I don’t understand why Gavin was so against providing the code in the long long long topic on that, but I’ve never gotten the impression he’s “unreasonable”. He’s just got a way of looking at things. All we can do is try better in the future, right? But as I said, there are certain ways blogs work, and it’s just their nature, and so there’s risks associated with how a certain one is run, who’s running it (or more particularly, how they think and what they think), and what the subject is. And the diversity of the readers…..
#48 well-stated and all should agree that civility will get us farther than sniping. I’ve observed that the level of emotional squabbling spikes after a troll lobs in a provocation. Let’s agree to ignore the trolls, shall we?
Back on topic: has anyone done a world plot of the CRU stations to look at distributions?
#41 “A scientist who is not a skeptic is not a good scientist IMHO. A good scientist will let the data speak for itself, and even then be critical. This site is really about finding and following the data so that it can speak for itself, regardless of the comments and opinions.”
That’s always how I’ve looked at it, but it’s surprising how often that seems to not be true. I’ve been following these discussions and analysis of the temperature station data and the manipulations of it with great interest. On the one hand, I do not envy someone like Hansen et al the task of taking a large number of probably poorly sited and run temperature station’s data, with missing data and site location changes, and attempt to tease a rigorous temperature trend out of it, it’s a Herculean problem. It also further calls into question the validity of an “average temperature” for a planetary system as complex as the Earth. On the other hand, I absolutely am horrified at how the pro-AGW community, and yes, Hansen in particular, have handled the controversy and questions about their data and methods. I was always taught (I’m a physicist) that data and method transparency is critical. I know full well that I am not perfect in my analyses, no scientist I’ve ever seen is, we are all human and make mistakes and have blind spots, but to deliberately attempt to obscure things and then act petulant when forced to open up is a credibility killer to me.
I can recall a similar problem domain I was involved in early in my working career, involving accuracy of a ballistic missile system where Reynolds number effects weren’t adequately modeled in the trans-atmospheric region (yes, I am employed as a merchant of death, that probably already disqualifies me in some people’s eyes). This made the system fall short of the target and low in height of burst, neither of which is a good thing for a nuclear tipped missile. I was presented with a ton of uncorrelated data showing range and HOB errors for different test launches, where altitude of launch, range, azimuth of launch, time of year, altitude of target, were all variable, and I had to tease a simple model out of that to improve the firing tables. I mention this because it was similar in some respects to the temperature station and trend issue at discussion here, it was a damned difficult problem, but probably an order of magnitude easier than the temperature issues here. But I was completely open about what my assumptions were, how I modeled the data and trends, what data I used, what I considered outliers and why. I can’t imagine not being open. And I got plenty of corrections and good ideas from my colleagues, and by having to defend my assumptions got more confidence in some of them and understood them more for having them challenged.
This is why the attitudes prevailing in the climate science community by many of its practitioners, and yes Mann and Hansen come to mind, just gobsmacks me. When I compare the level of openness and forthrightness here on this site, that our host Steve McIntyre practices, and that others like Pielke practice, to what has occurred with others, it raises serious credibility issues with much of what is considered common knowledge with respect to this issue.
#48 Very true probably applies to CA as well. Persons tend to take comments personally and maybe it would be more useful to critize organizations data etc…rather than individuals, the less you name individuals the more credible it becomes. CA appears to be gaining credibility
JohnV, #45 said:
That is because much of the science backing claims of catastrophic consequences from AGW seems speculative, incomplete and over-hyped for reasons that are known only to those making the claims.
Certainly, you must agree that none of this has been proven conclusively based on the science that has been published (and publicized)so far. AGW believers have also created a climate (!) of suspicion by being less than forthcoming with their research data.
The ideological undercurrent behind much of this speculative science seems to be be that mankind and its capitalist economies are too powerful, destructive and immoral, or if you prefer, amoral; that they are oblivious to the welfare of people everywhere and skeptical of AGW for purely venal reasons.
That tends to get people’s dander up.
Re Gary #55:
Just a map, no analysis; too much schoolwork 😦
I’m banned from Tamino’s blog, not because of snarky comments or any bad language, but simply because he didn’t like my scientific opinion. I’ve had a heap of posts summarily censored at RealClimate because I asked penetrating questions without a hint of personal attack.
As a result, I sometimes sound bitter about the individuals involved. Sorry ’bout that, I know it’s counter productive.
Me, I agree with Steve M’s light hand. Better to err in that direction than the other. I’m just very tired of the crap that people try to pass off as science. Hansen hid his code until he was forced to give it up. Jones/HadCRUT is still not revealing their code or their data, and only coughed up their list of stations after I made a Freedom of Information Act request and then hassled them for six months. Thompson still hasn’t archived his data, along with a number of other “scientists”. Goosse and his editors told me that they would consider and reply to the points that I and others had made, and then they just shined it on.
Like I said before, I’m a reformed cowboy, but sometimes the lying and concealing and misdirection and refusal to answer gets to be too much for my reformed ways, and I accuse them of pissing on my boots and trying to convince me that it’s raining. Not the politest language, I know, but hey, I’m a cowboy first and reformed second. When I started studying climate science, I had expected that the scientists involved would at least be as honest as cowboys … boy, was I naive.
Now, there’s folks that seem to be getting upset that some people on the list are calling some of the scientists “liars” and “cheats” and the like … but dear friends, when they are lying and cheating, what would you prefer that they be called? I grew up on a cattle ranch, and I don’t know these niceties, so perhaps one of you that is so upset by the posts could clue me in — what is the politically correct term for a liar or a cheat? Goosse and his editor flat out lied to me … how would you prefer that I phrase that?
w.
Most of the New Zealand sites are also either airfields or urban. Many of the airfields are also in the suburban or lifestyle smallholdings areas so the change in groundcover will have an effect additional to the tarmac. With the Hansen modification on top of the UHI, is it any wonder that the graphs show warming.
It is interesting to contrast the data from the island sites like Raoul, Campbell and Chatham with the urban sites. By choosing the data, one can get it to support the idea one wishes to push.
Gavin over at RealClimate, in his post on his trip to China, mentioned the idea that scientists strive for “ownership of their slice of paleoclimate data”. I don’t have an exact quote because their site is down right now. In principle, I can’t argue with that. I did not like the idea that countries were voiding Bayer’s patent on Cipro because it was effective for anthrax, but in this case, they are asking us to spend trillions of dollars based on this data. What kind of world does Gavin live in that he thinks his word is good enough to spend trillions on, without verification?
Then he references Eli Rabbet’s post on the work that was done here. Eli claims to see no difference between the high quality sites and the low quality sites when clearly the warming trend is more pronounced in the low quality sites. And this is in the US where there is not much of a trend to begin with. They just prattle on as if they genuinely couldn’t see it.
They create more skeptics with their obvious propagandizing than this site ever could.
There is a huge difference between intellectual property developed by a company and scientific data developed with government funding. Every single U.S. government contract has several Federal Acquisition Regulation clauses. Among these clauses it that the data cannot be copyrighted and is available for “government purpose” which includes release to the public for scientific raw data (as long as it is not covered by ITAR).
You should submit a FOIA for all of the contract numbers for their contracts. Then you can go to the sponsoring government agency, wave the FAR’s as they are called around, and then the government can hand the data over to you and you don’t have to deal with the principal investigator.
#63. If the government never takes delivery of the data, they can evade FOI. That’s what happens with (say) Lonnie Thompson funded by NSF. Take a crack at getting his sample data – I’ll be happy to document your progress. I’ve tried for 4 years.
While it seems were on the subject of likes/dislikes related to this blog…I would still like to see a concise, high-level overview of what work has been done and the significance to the bigger picture. The “Overview: Describing What We Do” post is from Feb 2005. I presume most of the contributors and commenters on this blog would agree that a lot has happened since then?
As for Erik’s comment earlier in this thread re attacks on people…actual personal “attacks” are rare, but the comment threads are filled with subtle, yet effective anti-Hansen rhetoric (and the ‘well, they do it too!’ argument is lame). The anti-GISS rhetoric doesn’t bother me that much…but, from time to time there can be a flurry of general anti-science rhetoric in the comment thread which is quite alarming. If CAers want more climate scientists to come and participate here, that kind of stuff only turns serious scientists away. Why should they spend the time trying to find the valuable stuff in CA if you got some guy implicating the entire discipline of atmospheric science as wholly incompetent. That is ridiculous and any serious person knows it. And I assume the real CAers do want that participation from the climate science community…otherwise all the statements about scientific integrity and we-just-want-to-know-the-truth are just posturing.
So, my wish list (not that my opinion counts for anything) would be (1) a short, concise post about the significance of CA work to the overall understanding up to this point, and (2) perhaps minimizing comments from the anti-science zealots. But, overall…I enjoy reading CA. I do think it’s important to keep up with the work and ideas here.
Re: #65
Brian, you write
Others (including Dr. Curry, IIRC) have made this argument here, but I’ve never understood it. One might similarly argue that people won’t look at their email accounts because of the chance that there might be some spam among the messages! While that might be true for some people, anyone who is temperamentally unable to ignore the chaff in their email or on blogs is severely handicapped in the internet world.
It’s pretty easy to determine for oneself which of the posts here are worth reading, and there’s certainly no requirement to even acknowledge the rest.
#65: I have not seen any anti-science postings on this site. Being critical of climate science is different than being critical of science as a whole. Science is about making predictions and testing to see if those predictions hold and can be reproduced. It is also about holding all but one variable constant if at all possible. In general, science should be an open process that doesn’t involve hiding information from those who wish to try to reproduce your results. In my opinion, climate science should be scrutinized more than some other sciences simply because it has so many variables and cannot be easily tested in a lab.
From what I’ve seen there are plenty of engineers on here who appear to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder about scientists in general. Gets a bit grating after a while. It stands to reason that putting together models of future global climate is not the same as designing a bridge, where the underlying physics involved is much better understood, and that as a result there will inherently be a lot more hand waving arguments and guesstimate based assumptions in the process but some people on here don’t seem to grasp that.
The engineers here have no problem grasping the difference, but they do not find that the difference constitutes an anything-goes-hall-pass justifying poor methodology and whispering behind closed doors as proper scientific procedure. By your own words the fact that the underlying physics may not be as well understood as you state calls into question the predictive power of the modeling community.
Yet many of the leaders of the modeling community behave as engineers designing a bridge with all the certainty thereof. That is the problem. Can the models have scientific value? Absolutely. But, when they are treated as an engineering certainty and politicized policy implications and spending follow, well, that may be a problem.
“Many of the worst replies have served as my motivation for OpenTemp (which by the way shows that GISTEMP does a great job of matching the best stations in the USA lower 48).
There is also a tendency here to personalize every analysis and demonize individuals. (GISTEMP adjustments are called Hansen adjustments, for example).”
#38 John V, even as “court-jester”, I agree with your second sentence.
But your first sentence is unsustanciated. Why do you keep repeating it, please (no cowboy tone here 😉 ) ?
Your work is fine but your conclusion is wrong : even for USA48 where data are readily available and documented (we can’t say the same for laaaarrrge patches of lands like the Russia or China), GISTEMP can’t decently reproduce pre-1950 temperatures which invariably results in higher than expected trends.
A trend is a trend
Except when made up by Hansen.
#58, theduke,
Another thing that tends to get people’s dander up is being insulted for daring to disagree with the in-crowd.
Being called a “denier” is hardly a good way to start a conversation.
Being accussed of being in the pocket of Exxon because you have a different take on the data is not likely to decrease emotional content.
Having your livelihood threatened, even be threatened with jail, because you disagree is hardly conducive to warm feelings.
Erik Rambeck and John V, I feel your pain. As a trial lawyer who sees his function as dispute resolution, over 25 years experience has taught me that efforts to resolve issues and to move the ball forward often founder in the presence ad hominem attacks, with growing emotional investment in the respective positions. Sometimes, I have succeeded in breaking such deadlocks when I enlist my client in a serious effort to understand the other sides position by actually undertaking some of the difficulties the other side claims (working with components that have the slightest of imperfections or trying to weld cans with specifications for inadequate liners, etc.).
To that end, and for example, I suggest that John V, who expresses on his blog real enthusiasm for understanding climate data, take on with at least some of his time one or more projects on which posters here have focused. For example, if John and Erik agree that data and code claimed to support climate science findings of significance should be publicly available when paid for with taxpayer dollars, then why not try to obtain the data/code from Phil Jones/HadCRU and Lonnie Thompson? John and Erik could report here on progress from time to time. In fact, I could see where Steve might post a substantial exposition on the blog outlining the nature of the efforts and the means by which they obtained minor/significant success and their views on that process. Such an effort might bridge some of the emotional distance between the sides and bring light to the topic rather than smoke flares and carnage.
I began reading climate science materials four years ago when my daughter reached voting age and asked about current political issues. I have no dog in the hunt other than to learn/refresh methods of advocacy from rhetorical devices employed in both sides arguments. There clearly is a scientific debate on many topics from what Ive read, though even lack of debate about a topic in science can mean nothing (so what if everyone alive for thousands of years believed in an Earth centric universe). Many , and probably most, posters here from both sides are honorable people holding good faith beliefs. All blogs would be better if posters would communicate only after making a determined effort to place themselves in the shoes of those they would criticize. That said, 50 years of human experience teaches me not to expect it, so Steve keep a blue pencil ready!
I invite Erik and John V to undertake one of the projects if only until they advance it toward completion and to share their experience/views along the way. It would add immeasurably to everyones understanding of a multifaceted topic engendering altogether too much hyperbole and comments toward personal destruction.
Comments on land stations in Finland used by CRU (Jones):
28360 674 -267 179 Sodankylae FINLAND Rural
28750 650 -255 13 Oulu FINLAND Urban
28960 660 -292 263 Kuusamo FINLAND Airport
28970 643 -277 132 Kajaani FINLAND Airport
29110 631 -218 4 VAASA AIRPORT FINLAND Airport
29170 629 -277 119 Kuopio FINLAND Urban
29290 627 -296 117 JOENSUU————- FINLAND—– Airport
29350 622 -257 137 Jyvaeskylae FINLAND Urban
29430 615 -238 85 Tampere FINLAND Urban
29580 611 -282 105 Lappeenranta FINLAND ????
29630 608 -235 104 JOKIOINEN OBSERVATOR FINLAND Rural
29720 605 -223 51 Turku FINLAND Airport
29740 603 -250 53 HELSINKI-VANTAA AIRP FINLAND Airport
29780 602 -250 4 Helsinki/Kaisaniemi FINLAND Urban
It looks like all coordinates are inaccurate. I could not locate the station in Lappeenranta
because there are two stations at roughly equal distances to the CRU location. An interesting observation is:
There are 2 rural stations
There are 6 airports
There are 5 urban stations
The rural stations represent ca. 15% of the stations used by Jones in Finland.
Brian
“Getting real scientist to comment on this site”.
They are already and have been for some time. Think about the tem you would assemble if you were about to start a project on climate science, what skills would you select. I would venture the following:
Physicists, Electrical engs, software project managers/leaders, meteorologists, statisticians, auditors and admin.
Right? May have forgotten one or two but all these skills are on this site in abundance. AND add to that the personalities, honesty, open minded, logical and sometimes satirical we have it all. RC etc can all comment here,; no problem, within the relatively generous but always very clear rule set by the owner. And why do we sometimes get snarky? because the same courtisies are not granted by the people who level ill-founded
criticisms at the contributers to this site.
Human nature to blow off a little steam once in a while, don’t you think? Bear with us and please feel free to contribute you will gain as much from this site as your open-mindedness will allow. Bonne Chance
#59 – Thanks, Mike. Nice graphic.
Well, I just want to take time to thank JohnV for his work and level headedness.
Demesure:
Have a look at post #91 in the Second Look #2 thread:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2124#comment-144287
With TOBS corrections applied, GISTEMP and CRN12R are within ~0.1C as far back as ~1925 (in the USA lower 48, and the error bars are not yet known and there are geographical biases). The trend from 1900 to 2005 is extremely small (
Douglas Foss:
I can tell you without even starting that I would get *extremely* frustrated trying to get access to the data, code, and methods. Research is *not* my strong point. I will continue contributing by validating results posted by others and working on OpenTemp with the goal of developing an open and trusted temperature history.
I have no problem with comments about the frustration of trying to get the data. My issues are with extrapolating that frustration into accusations of fraud.
D’oh! Post #77 got caught off before I could repeat my disclaimers:
…
With TOBS corrections applied, GISTEMP and CRN12R are within ~0.1C as far back as ~1925 (in the USA lower 48, and the error bars are not yet known and there are geographical biases). The trend from 1900 to 2005 is extremely small (less than 0.01C total).
I must repeat that there are geographical biases in the CRN12R station list and that these results are for the USA lower 48 only.
There are trillions of dollars at stake based on the data.
There are “trillions” of dollars at stake in both directions. If we do nothing and AGW is real, the costs will be huge. A comparison between the costs of reducing emissions (with no consideration for the benefits) and the cost of doing nothing (with no consideration for consequences) is hugely biased.
>> There are trillions of dollars at stake in both directions.
That only reinforces the need for diligence, intellectual honesty and transparency.
>> If we do nothing and AGW is real, the costs will be huge.
The only potential negative identified so far is sea level rise. That only affects those people who live too close to sea level. The population at large is not responsible for the risks they took. Even for them, it would not be sudden, but slowly over 100 years. The costs are dwarfed by the economic strength of 100 years. Of course, greenland may have an immigration problem.
re: #77 John V
Yes, you may have gotten Gistemp and the quality sites to match, but think what that means? It would imply that there is no adjustment for UHI in Gistemp, since you haven’t gotten to that stage yet. Sorry, but I don’t believe that that’s a correct position [assuming Gistemp is supposed to adjust for UHI; I lose track of what is supposed to have what]. Everyone agrees there is UHI (except perhaps Peterson), but then the AGW advocates claim that despite doubling population, there is no trend in UHI in recent decades. This doesn’t pass the smell test. But I’m not too worried. Once the surface stations are examined for rural urban differences, we should probably be able to figure out what the actual UHI is.
Anyway, there’s very little expectation here that there’s been no global warming in the 2oth century. The expectation here (by many; maybe not by Steve M) is that much of it is natural rebound from the LIA and there is also some measurement contamination by UHI and other things leaving an A about a third or so of what AGW promoters claim. This would correspond to the expected CO2 fingerprint without H2O feedback.
Re: #81
Another and most important consideration is what is the cost of the problem being real and the mitigations creating even larger problems. Large governement programs such as the one required for this problem do not have good track records. Another important consideration is the ability of the populations to adapt to the adverse effects of a changing climate. Thirdly we could at some future point (not currently in my view) determine with reasonable certainty that the temperature will climb x degrees in the future without knowing with any degree of certainity the occurence of adverse versus beneficial effects.
I’ve noticed a recent trend of commenter’s here to complain about the “tone” of the debate, and of the way some of the AGW proponents are being referred to. I’ve been around a fair number of years, and seen more than my share of online debates going back to the ARPANet days, and have to point out something. When someone starts complaining about the tone of a debate between two camps, especially when the “attacks” are as benign as we see here, it’s usually an indication of weakness on the part of their argument, and an attempt to deflect attention away from that fact. That’s particularly true when the comments are in response to even worse behavior on their sides part, behavior which is what provoked the response in the first place.
See Hansen’s referral of Steve McIntyre and others as “court jesters” and worse, then compare the mild responses you see in the comments here. And, if you don’t want to be called a cheat and a fraud, don’t hide your data and methods. Openness will curtail a lot of that, unless you really do have something to hide.
And, frankly, get real. Despite all our Ivory Tower beliefs and such, science has and always will be somewhat of a contact sport. And now that climate science has decided to wed itself at the hip with politics, get ready for it to get even worse, as politics is definitely a bare knuckle, sharp elbows and knees, contact sport of the first order.
I would encourage those complaining about the tone of the debate to focus on content, as in providing arguments to support your cause that are persuasive, or at least honest and forthright, and not try and divert attention by attempting to blame others about real or perceived insults.
Both John V and Erik Ramberg have posted with statements accusing posters here of making “accusations of fraud” and “accusing [Hansen] of systematically committing scientific fraud over a period of 20 years.”
When Hansen recently archived his source code, apparently under duress from NASA, he said that he wanted to “simplify” the code before making it public. We discovered that the code as archived had been changed from the code that had been used for the past 7 years at least, leading to material changes in individual stations that we had been monitoring, e.g. Detroit Lakes. We backtracked this and determined that, on or about Sept 7, 2007, Hansen changed from using the SHAP version of USHCN data to the FILNET version and that this had the effect of a slight re-ordering of the U.S. leaderboard so that 1998 was returned into first place, in a tie with 1934. This change had been initiated without any notice or disclosure (although there is now a disclosure at their site). Although the change had a strong impact on some U.S. stations (and as it turned out, Detroit Lakes was an extreme example), it had negligible effect on the global temperature index.
There was a substantial different in attitudes towards the change and its non-disclosure between people with business and accounting experience and those without it. Some people argued that, because the change didn’t have a material impact on the global rankings, it didn’t “matter” and that worrying about something that had an impact of 0.001 degrees on global temperature was the definition of trivia. People with business and accounting experience wer more critical.
It’s hard to get the right nuance so that one calls these actions to account without venting. On many occasions, I urge posters not to be angry – a tone that I try to avoid (although not always successfully). In order to capture the nuance, let me recall the comments of the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee when Michael Mann sent a lawyer’s letter rather than appearing himself – the Chairman observed ironically that the sort of people that usually send lawyer’s letter to their committee rather than appearing themselves are the sort of people to whom scientists do not typically like to be compared. In this case, these sorts of undisclosed accounting changes in the business world are typically carried out by unsalubrious people to whom Hansen would not want to be compared.
In response to an earlier John V post making similar criticisms, I said:
In response, John V substantially endorsed all of my comments.
In response to Erik Ramberg’s post, I replied:
In response to this, Erik cited the 19 posts listed below
I’ve examined these posts. I did not write these posts and have said explicitly that I do not necessarily endorse comments made by others. Contrary to the allegations of John V and Erik, none of these posts uses the word “fraud” or “deception” and none of them accuses Hansen of “systematically committing scientific fraud over a period of years. A couple of them contain venting of the type that I discourage and often delete. Many of them are strongly worded on the incident in question, but, in my opinion, fall well short of making the claims alleged by Erik. As noted below, I am prepared to snip some of these comments – if the comments are worth snipping, I do not think that they should be preserved for any sort of record.
In addition, in defence of my moderating practices: this blog receives an overwhelming amount of comment. Yesterday I went to play squash league and there were 100 posts when I got back. Last night when I came in, I did a quick comparison of post volume in October here and at realclimate – a very active blog – and, as at 11.30 pm eastern last night, we’d had over 8 times the comment volume of realclimate. We’d had over 400 commments, while they had had about 50. As compared to less active sites than realclimate, the volume is a deluge. This very volume poses problems that are different from what I had in mind when I started.
In terms of blog management, I’d rather go back and delete and snip, as opposed to moderate in advance. I try to keep an eye on specific words – “fraud” is one of them – and I try to root out such accusations. Despite their allegations, neither Erik nor John V, after leveling accusations of “accusations of fraud”, actually adduced any online examples in which the term “fraud” was used in an accusation.
Now to Erik’s inventory. Once again, I re-iterate that none of the comments cited are by me and none of them uses the word “fraud” and none of them “accuse Hansen of “systematically committing scientific fraud over a period of 20 years.” Many were critical of Hansen’s undisclosed switching of accounting methods and a few contained the sort of venting against climate science that I discourage and frequently delete or snip. The Hansen incident also occasioned a number of comments by non-regular posters and there was a relatively high proportion of such in the Erik list, although not all by any means.
HFTC #3: the worst thing here was a snark saying that there was a lot of “subjectiveness” in processing the data. I’ve certainly been very critical of “subjectiveness” in handling proxy data, although I don’t think that I’ve arrived at sufficient understanding of the temperature methods to know that yet. I certainly have concerns about “subjectiveness” in the station selection at CRU, for example. The comment is a little snarky but nowhere near an accusation of serial systematic scientific fraud.
#25 criticized Hansen’s plan to “simplify” the code before releasing noting that “itll also be an interesting exercise to compare the simplified code to the original.” While we don’t have the original code, Hansen changed from SHAP to FILNET accounting in the “simplification” – the identification of which I, for one, found to be an interesting exercise. The comment included a snark about Hansen saying that South America, Africa, Antarctica “don’t matter” – a remark that does leave itself open for a snark in return. No accusation of serial systematic fraud in this comment that I can see.
#31 was a response to my #23 in which I described Hansen’s bizarre handling of scribal versions – a description which no one has contradicted.
My post seems to be an accurate description of what Hansen did and contained no suggestion of fraud, although it’s obviously not complimentary. The poster in #31 used the term “manipulation”, disagreeing with me. “Manipulated” was not a term that I’ve used to search comment files; it is stronger than I believe justified and I’m prepared to snip this..
#55 was by a non-regular poster. I think that people are entitled to amuse themselves by speculating on what happened behind the scenes that occasioned Hansen releasing the code – something that he didn’t want to do. I don’t see any accusation of serial systematic fraud in this post.
#73 is also by a non-regular poster who described himself as a science professional. It contained no mention of Hansen whatever, although it contains the type of angry venting that I try to discourage and often delete or snip. I’m prepared to snip much of this.
#82 by a regular poster stated that it was unlikely that Hansen would make “substantial changes” in the cause of simplification. I see no justification for criticism of this blog on account of this post.
#93 also by a regular poster discussed a highly problematic amendment of 5 California stations. The post is critical – and reasonably so – but the criticism appears within the realm of permitted discourse and does not contain any allegation of serial systematic fraud.
Hansen – Then and Now comment #1 also used the term “manipulated”. As noted above, I’m prepared to put this word on my radar screen. The point about the ability of one person to make unilateral changes to accounting systems used for climate statistics is worth making however. While climate scientists may not be familiar with accounting controls or their purposes, others are and I believe that it is legitimate (and appropriate) to use accounting concepts in the consideration of how the preparation of temperature statistics are controlled. Having said that, my inclination is to snip slightly.
#2 noted that a code release wouldn’t be as meaningful if Hansen keeps “fiddling with things”. It’s hard to use completely neutral language to describe Hansen’s undisclosed change of accounting. The comment falls well short of accusing Hansen of “fraud”. The concern about the conflict between Hansen making climate models and Hansen being a custodian of temperature statistics seems to me to be something that can certainly be uttered: there is a potential conflict between being a climate modeler and the custodian of temperature statistics, who keeps score. Separation of duties is something that is done in accounting controls and I see no problem in airing the issue.
#4 was critical of Hansen changing his methods mid-stream. It expressed regret at him doing this but did not accuse him of serial systematic fraud.
#11 was simply a quote from George Orwell – see #26.
#13 objected to the lack of “formal accounting procedures” among other things – something that I agree with – but made no accusations of fraud.
#26 was another quotation from Orwell. The quotes are snarky but make no accusations. They highlight something that seems fair enough – when Hansen corrected his “Y2K error”, he did not issue a change statement in which the previous results were kept on record and a statement of changes issued. He simply changed all his data with no explicit notice on his website. When you think about it, when he later criticized critics for not showing the effect of the changes, he didn’t mention that he’d removed the prior data from his website. Without the preservation of the earlier data by critics, no one would know what the earlier position had been. I think that the Orwell quotes are snarky, but fall well short of accusing Hansen of fraud.
#34 is an angry statement of the type that I often delete (and am prepared to snip on account of its angriness), but doesn’t accuse Hansen of serial systematic fraud.
#48 is a snark. It is a fact that the 1930s in the US have gotten much “colder” since Hansen et al 1999. In Hansen et al 1999, 1934 was 0.6 deg C warmer than 1998. The big change in the leader board came with Hansen et al 2001, when they were placed in a dead heat. I think that this large change deserves to be carefully examined. It was made primarily because of the TOBS and SHAP adjustments by NOAA, neither of which have been analysed either here or anywhere else in detail. The principle of a TOBS adjustment seems fair enough and, if I had to pick a USHCN version, I’d be inclined to use the TOBS or MMTC versions – before the station history (SHAP) and FILNET adjustments. But whether the actual TOBS adjustment makes sense, I don’t know.
#54 is angry and I’d often snip or delete this sort of post (and am prepared to snip on account of angriness) but doesn’t accuse Hansen of serial systematic fraud.
#67 is a little angrier than I like and I’m prepared to snip it a bit. However the idea that data that does not conform to models is wrong is actually something that crops up from time to time in climate science – CCSP “reconciled” the inconsistency between tropical troposphere models and data by arguing that the data was probably wrong.
#72 used the term “capriciously tinkering” which falls into the same category as “manipulated” and is something that I’m prepared to snip.
#79 – Most of this post seems within comment boundaries; the first sentence may attribute motives for which we don’t have any knowledge.
Thus out of this list, there are no specific accusations of “fraud”; there are a few posts in which the term “manipulated” or “capriciously tinkered” was used and I’m prepared to snip these. There were a couple of generalized angry posts and I’m prepared to snip these. While I’m prepared to do these snips, I don’t think that either Erik or John V were justified in accusing posters here of making “accusations of fraud”. And given the deluge of comments that this blog receives, these examples hardly prove that the blog is “brimful” of such accusations.
I think most of us posting here are mature adults and can determine for ourselves what is over reaction from both sides — and without spending (wasting) so much time pointing fingers at the other guy. The fun here is dealing with specific issues and learning. Posts that deal with appearances and without any other substance are rather easy to spot and then either ignored or skimmed.
Laughable, truly laughable! The AGW use of rhetoric – such as use of the term “denialist” to “divert attention” – is acceptable, but people complaining about it is “an indication of weakness on the part of their argument, and an attempt to deflect attention away from that fact?”
[snip]
#83 Dave Dardinger:
Wrong.
The comparison I referred to above was between GISTEMP and the rural CRN1 and CRN2 stations. I have every reason to believe UHI is real so I removed it from the analysis to get more accurate results.
SteveMc:
You accuse me above of “leveling accusations of accusations of fraud” — I don’t believe I wrote those words. I also did not suggest this site is “brimful” of anything. If I did say either of those things, I retract them.
What I did say is ” indirect accusations and not-so-subtle suggestions remain”. I stand by those words.
I also said that “I am not faulting you for missing a few of the comments”. It is undoubtedly a large job to scrub the comments clean. As one who is here frequently, I generally read the comments before they are removed.
I did endorse your comments and I continue to do so.
You do not wish to be held responsible for all of the comments on your blog. That’s fair. In return I ask that you do not hold me responsible for the comments of others.
Steve:
John V, you said
That looks to me like you using the words “accusations of fraud”. The “brimful” remark was by Erik Ramberg, who I quoted specifically in the comment and did not conflate with you . Erik said:
There’s a big difference between that and a fair characterization of poster comments.
88, and since you brought up the “denier/denialist” label, I’ve never understood exactly what’s being denied. That there is a warming trend in the 20th century? That it’s caused by CO2? That’s it’s caused by cattle flatulence? That there isn’t a MWP? That there are tipping points out there ready to snap? You can’t answer the question if it hasn’t been properly formulated, and it hasn’t.
I know that there are a couple of diehard greenhouse deniers here, but aside from that, there’s no denying going on, there’s questioning. The fact that people use a red herring like “denial” indicates something about their intellect.
As for me, and I think most people here fall in this category, I’m agnostic. I have yet to be convinced, and refuse to be herded. That’s not denial, that’s skepticism. There’s a huge difference, which I think should be obvious. If the alarmists (and I think that’s an accurate term in this context) can make a more cogent case, I am willing to take it seriously. I haven’t ruled anything out. But I haven’t ruled anything in, either (except basic greenhouse physics), becase the evidence just isn’t robust.
re: #86 Steve,
Personally I have no problem with snipping, but like so many others I wish you’d leave a stub if one “snipped” so that the numbering doesn’t go bonkers. Take this particular post of yours. If you delete posts your lengthy message will be meaningless in the future. And, BTW, there won’t be any change list for people to compare. Whereas if you leave things as they are, you have a readymade link to give the next person who complains.
John V, a couple of points. It would be polite to include a link to climateaudit in your frames. Also, please link to the correct address climateaudit.org.
Second, you should state clearly at your site that your work to date is limited to the US lower 48, which, as Gavin Schmidt points out, is only 2% of the world’s land surface and that the methodologies used in the U.S. lower 48 differ from those in the rest of the world; that the proportion of rural stations available in the U.S. may differ from other parts of the world; that NASA’s estimated U.S. increase is less than estimates from other agencies and is much less than their estimates in other parts of the world using different methodologies, so that results from evaluation of NASA’s US methodology cannot be used to draw conclusions about methodologies in the rest of the world or by other agencies. Without this sort of caveat, there is the risk of a bait-and-switch appearance, in which possibly unrepresentative U.S. results are used to vindicate potentially problematic results in other parts of the world using different methods and relying on data of much worse quality.
Re: #90 John V,
Look at the first link in Steve’s post. You might not have wanted to leave the implication that you think people “here” level accucations of fraud, but that’s certainly the most straightforward interpretation of what you said.
BTW, sorry about missing the “R” in the 1-2 list. Mia Culpa.
SteveMc:
I am not sure I understand. If you are referring to opentemp.org, it is right now just a shell where I posted the code for review and where I upload my data and results for validation. The website itself is minimal, gets almost no traffic, and has no links anywhere.
No results, opinions, or analyses are posted on the website. If and when I start to post USA lower 48 results at opentemp.org, I will be sure to explicitly include the necessary disclaimers (as I have been doing here). Perhaps it would be appropriate for you to include similar disclaimers when analyzing a single station.
#94 Dave Dardinger:
You’re right.
While I have read accusations of fraud here, SteveMc does a good job of cleaning them up (usually after I’ve read them, but it’s not his fault that I’m addicted to keeping up with this site). I was thinking of personal discussions in the real world when I wrote those words.
SteveMc,
Don’t let the fanatics bog you down in a defense of this site.
Hansen took money from George Soros.
Your enemies ae very well funded.
I’m sure some have been paid to come her to disrupt you.
#97 probably needs a snip.
re: #94
To expand on what I pointed out to John V. One big advantage of peer-reviewed literature is that major points are supposed to include references to the past literature so that those willing to do the searches can come up with a trail back to the original research. I might add that that’s also one of the big problems with using peer-reviewed literature if you’re an interested, intelligent layman in an area. And when we’re dealing with science being touted for international policy setting, there really should be a public repository of all the pertinent documents available on-line. If there are particular documents where permission can’t be obtained, then these should be replaced by review articles containing the equations, data, etc. of interest. (If that can’t be done it’s not science in the first place.)
Thinking that there should have been such a repository somewhere I could use to check and see if the scary headlines being produced 8-10 years ago were correct or not is what got me interested in the subject in the first place. I couldn’t find such a site and obviously one still doesn’t exist, though CA is getting close to being what I wanted.
Anyway, my advice to posters on this site is that if you’re accusing someone here of writing something you don’t like, make a link, (as Steve is very good at doing.) Lacking that, use actual quotes or at worse a thread and message number. Vague accusations just don’t cut it and generally make you look silly in the long run. A lot of us, myself included, spend a lot of time carefully crafting our messages so as not to descend to ad homdom, and just sigh when we either get accused of it anyway (or when we do see posters going overboard when it would have been fairly easy to say the same thing without being inflammatory [See Steve’s analysis in #86 above for examples]).
#90 SteveMc:
I see you responded directly in my comment. As for my quote “My issues are with extrapolating that frustration into accusations of fraud. “, see my reply to Dave Dardinger. I withdraw and apologize for the comment.
Mark W. #71:
To be fair, most of the scientists promulgating AGW that I have observed have responded in a professional manner to questions and criticisms. Hansen and Mann seem to be the exception. Nor is there any excuse for RC to exclude posters with alternative points of view. It’s not only anti-intellectual, it’s self-defeating. I bet CA gets at minimum twice the traffic they do.
No, the problem of ad hominem invective originates primarily with the professional activists in the extremist environmental and policy organizations and foundations. I’ve locked horns with these people on forums at the Washington Post, New York Times (now defunct) and the Guardian. Their fervor can be alarming, no pun intended. They’ve been at it for several decades now. There was an article over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal examining the proselytizing of children on environmental issues in schools. Our children have been subjected to thirty plus years of often alarmist information by environmental evangelists. This proselytizing has created a class of people who are often hostile to capitalism, progress, growth, wealth and, yes, even objective, comprehensive science. To challenge the assumptions of the true believers often brands you as apostate.
The great virtue of the CA blog is it’s mission, which is, in so many words, “Let’s slow down and get this right.”
(I promise I’m done being off topic.)
99,
Bingo. The whole thing, whether funded by the UN or national governments, should be open-source. Including the software. And hyperlink the references, so that you can work your way through the tree effortlessly.
If someone thinks that’s too expensive, please explain what the world has recieved in exchange for the $20,000,000,000+ that’s been spent to date on climate change research.
And as I said on unthreaded, hire a major international engineering consulting firm that can be sued to manage the project. And then hire a major accounting firm to audit the results.
Steve
It depends of course on how the contracts are written but usually there are deliverables called out in the contract that require data to be provided to the COTR and a DD250 filled out. This is why trying the route of a FOIA for the contract, which the government always has a copy can be fruitful. If the contract calls for a deliverable of the data and or results, and if the PI has not done so, a contract protest can be made. This protest has to be dealt with by the procurement people, not the government scientific contact. Procurement operates by a completely different set of rules than the government science people who develop the RFP’s and if a protest is made, things can be done in such a way as to block the PI who has not delivered his or her data, from receiving future contracts until the contracturally called out deliverable has been made. When the deliverable is made, procurement has to receive a copy so that they can sign off on the DD250 or equivalent deliverable document form.
I can see where you can have problems with the science guys protecting their compatriots in academia but the procurement folks are a different world and it is far easier to use the rules to promote openness there than in other areas.
I do a fair number of contracts with NASA and DoD and so have a pretty good idea about how these things work.
#39 Hans Erren…Sloppy database?? Aren’t there 3 Germanys??
West Germany, Germany and East Germany??… So now according
to Jones et al. there are not only three sort of lies…there are
also three sorts of Germanys….Hans, are we surprised???
You’ll find them at RC and RC-linked sites. Steve Bloom is a well-known one.
SteveM, it’s your site and you can do what you want, but spending 30 minutes reading it today I found it had became bogged down in a discussion of site etiquette. Time does disappear. The time you spend policing your site for tone and temper is time spent away from your doing what I come to your site for. I can make up my own mind regarding “Who Do You Trust?”
JohnV. Any regrets about:
What with it being quoted on the Rabbitrun, and RealDimwit?
By the way #97. I don’t remember Bruce, strange he should turn up now.
OK, other than a reply from Erik Bamberg to my post, hopefully with a retraction, I’d prefer it if every one else stopped the site etiquette comments.
Now back to CRU. I’ve spent a few hours looking at the sites and here’s something extremely annoying, which caused me some difficulties. I innocently assumed that their identification numbers were identification numbers i.e. unique. In multiple cases, they have multiple uses of the same identification number. For example:
or:
THese are from USHCN sites by and large which have clear GHCN identificaiton numbers? Why wouldn’t they have proper identification numbers? If they’ve got duplicates, how do they look things up? And what happens: presumably they retrieve one of the stations multiple times? It’s not going to “matter” at the end of the day, but the sloppiness in these elementary operations is palpable.
#48. Very well put.
#104 Addendum… May we see in the list:
GERMANY…DAMN GERMANY…STATISTIC GERMANY…
On the serious side I only count one station
in Germany…the Trainpeak aka Zugspitze GISS
is only from 1951, Tu Tiempo from 1935 (daily), but
some years missing…Well I would include Hohenpeissenberg
and possibly a few more…UK seems overrepresented
numberwise of stations…Heard of Bidston?? Not very
rural in Birkenhead opposite Liverpool albeit decreasing
population…It’s a lot to do…
#107 MarkR:
In answer to your question, let me quote myself from an earlier reply to Steve McIntyre:
I don’t believe that any one who commented on my analysis explicitly applied it to ROW either (although I did not follow those comments closely). Why are you so upset about a simple analysis and comparison between GISTEMP and the best stations in the USA lower 48?
RE 116.
Most climate science believers are economic science deniers.
Selective scepticism.
I’d suggest that #98 and #112 could use a reduction in snipiness through … Snipping!
OOps, too late for #112 – it’s gone in its former form.
Re #108,
Steve,
Here are a couple of pairs that should have matched, but the ID numbers are off.
42572528001 ALLEGANY STATE PARK 42.10 -78.75 457 549R -9HIxxLA-9x-9WARM MIXED A
42572635002 ALLEGAN 5NE 42.58 -85.78 228 229R -9HIxxno-9x-9COOL FOR./FIELD A
756217 ALLEGAN 5NE USA 426 858 228
756356 ALLEGANY STATE PARK USA 421 788 457
Perhaps one reason for reluctance to publish the list is that it is a mess.
If you have many yet to match, then if you post of file of them, we could pitch in.
Watch out for the longitudes; there are some positives that should be negative,
and some negatives that should be positive. If they use this file for their
gridding, it would have some odd effects. In any case, it is a mess.
It seems that they define positive/negative longitude the opposite way than
others do. As long as they are consistent, it would not be a problem.
tetris…I guess my original comment was scrubbed for being off-topic (sorry)…when I said CA should do a study, I meant a little more in-depth with multiple scenarios and realizations, not just one scheme. You make it seem as if its a done deal…nothing to study, nothing to analyze or evaluate.
Re:
No Brian, it was moved to “unthreaded 21”. My comment, however, appears to have vapourized. Maybe it will re-appear on unthreaded, who knows.
It is extraordinary that it appears a handful of people (apparently like minded), at NASA and Hadley control all the worlds temp data (and its interpretations). You would think that the data should be made available freely to anyone. Maybe CA should start posting monthly data collected directly from stations in an official site backed up by meteorologists etc? If the data is similar/same to Giss etc so be it
Steve: there is plenty of temperature data publicly available and publicly posted. Just look at the Station Data link in the left frame.
Okay, to recap: No f-word, no m-word, no venting and no physics. If you aren’t skilled in statistics you have to take a vow of silence…
#65 Brian: I don’t think anyone credible (if at all) has been saying everyone in any science discipline is “wholly incompetent” or even any majority. It’s all about the perception individuals create for themselves.
#78 John V: Without going into it, I’ll just rather repeat myself in a way; if you don’t want people to think you’re doing something, don’t act in a way that makes them think you are. The correlation to that is people shouldn’t make baseless over-the-top accusations when they comment about the actions of others.
#121 togger63: Not skilled in statistics? That is not true. There’s also the business, political and policy implications (and computers in general, etc).
Speaking about statistics, for those of you that didn’t know what r-squared is, here’s the definition (from moneychimp):
R-Squared
Statistical measure of how well a regression line approximates real data points; an r-squared of 1.0 (100%) indicates a perfect fit. The formula for r is:
r(X,Y) = [ Cov(X,Y) ] / [ StdDev(X) x StdDev(Y) ]
Regression: Technique of fitting a simple equation to real data points.
Standard deviation: A statistical measure of the distance a quantity is likely to lie from its average value. StdDev(r) = [1/n * (ri – rave)2]½
Covariance: A statistical measure of correlation of the fluctuations of two different quantities. Cov(r1, r2) = 1/n * (r1 i – r1 ave) * (r2 i – r2 ave)
Without deigning to reply to my detailed response (#86) to his untrue allegations that this site was “brimful” of “accusations of fraud”, Erik Ramberg has repeated his driveby false allegation over at RC http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/my-model-used-for-deception/#comment-57693
#123 Steve McIntyre:
I believe you have taken Erik Ramberg’s post at RealClimate out of context. I quote his entire post below:
I read this as a complaint to RealClimate about a post made at RealClimate, made in the same spirit (but less forcefully) than the complaint he made here.
Steve: Yes, but in doing so, he repeated his driveby allegation here regarding the supposed “frequent accusations of fraud on the part of climate scientists” at CA. I examined his allegations in detail here and he chose not to reply.
RE 123 Did you note, however, that everything you need to know about c02 doubling is in chaper 10
.?
#122 Sam Urbinto:
I will make the assumption that you are referring to my over-reaction to the “2006 and CRN1-2” article. Reading that thread now, I can see that my posts were responsible for raising the level of rhetoric in the comments. I could have handled it much better. I’ve learned that I have a temper when tired or hungry. I apologize.
Re #124,
John V,
The phrase “taken … out of context” does not, and cannot, apply to Steve’s
comment about that comment at RC, since Steve did not quote any part of that
comment.
Meanwhile, the suggestion that a statement that one comment “does not help any
discussion of climate science”, is in the same spirit as “frequent accusations
of fraud” seems bizarre.
Well, I think Erik is just not thinking very well about the affect his posts are likely to have on the person he’s posting to. I’m not sure exactly who he is, but the biggest “name” of a person with that name from a Google search is a lead physicist at Fermilab. If that’s him, perhaps he’s just not used to blogging or its on-line precursors — at least not outside specifically technical settings. Of course he appologized to ME, so I don’t have any dog in this race.
JohnV.
In eriks post he claimed that CA was full to the brim with claims of FRAUD against hansen.
he was asked to produce evidence. He cited two threads. I just checked all of his cites from one thread
I have not checked the others. I found out that one of my posts was on his list of offensive posts.
SO I ask you to decide. Was erik telling the truth when he cited my post as an example of accusing
hansen of FRAUD. Erik cited these posts as OFFFENSIVE:
Hansen frees the code: #3,25,31,55,73,82,93. I am post 93.
Some back ground, When we started looking at this I started positing to RC and signed off every request
for code or data with “free the code” One area I was particualrly intersted was a paragraph
in hansens 2001 paper where he described excising part of the record 5 california stations because
they were abnormally COOL. I asked gavin a couple time for basic data. What test was done to exclude these
stations? What stations were they compared to. I got the stonewall or RTFR. The funny THing was if you remove
cool stations in the early 1900, you diminish trend. For me that wasnt the issue. The issue was
1. Why these stations?
2. What was the test?
3. What sites were the comparisons made to.
Anyway here is the comment I made. Erik found this Offensive. Was he right?
( cause I’ve said way more offense stuff than this!)
“RE 89.
In Hansen 2001, Hansen described how he amended 5 northern California Stations
because they showed cooling.
From memory these stations were willows, electra, lake spaulding, I FORGOT, and Crater
Lake NPS HQ.
ok here is Hansen 2001
The strong cooling that exists in the unlit station data in the northern California region is not found in either
the periurban or urban stations either with or without any of the adjustments. Ocean temperature data for the same
period, illustrated below, has strong warming along the entire West Coast of the United States. This suggests the
possibility of a flaw in the unlit station data for that small region. After examination of all of the stations in this
region, five of the USHCN station records were altered in the GISS analysis because of inhomogeneities with
neighboring stations (data prior to 1927 for Lake Spaulding, data prior to 1929 for Orleans, data prior to 1911 for
Electra Ph, data prior of 1906 for Willows 6W, and all data for Crater Lake NPS HQ were omitted), so these
apparent data flaws would not be transmitted to adjusted periurban and urban stations. If these adjustments were not
made, the 100-year temperature change in the United States would be reduced by 0.01°C.
I looked at lake spaulding in the period of interest. I would agree with Hansen. The data is messed
up to use a technical term. it cools relative to other sites ( like Tahoe city ) in a nearly
linear fashion. That is, prior to 1927 or so, lake spaulding undergoes a nearly linear ( I think my r2
was abve .9) cooling. This might be indicative an instrument failing. After 1927 or so it tracks
( correlates) with the nearby stations.
Crater Lake? I disagree. I think he didnt like how
cold it was there. The chart is not weird its just cold. I compared crater Lake to surrounding
sites and if you adjust for lapse rates ( crater lake is high Alt) then the time series of nearby sites
are in lockstep with Crater lake.
Note, The code and the text dont document this Exclusion principal.
Its ad hoc. I looked at 2 of the 5 cases. 1 made sense, the other was a Hansenism.”
SO, I QUOTE hansen. Hansen says he excised these site records. I checked 2. In one I say I agree
with him. In the other I say I disagreed. The EXCLUSION of crater lake makes no sense to me.
I asked gavin on a couple of occasions for the reason. no reponse. Now, it doesnt matter for
for AGW. I NEVER accused him of fraud in this case. It’s a hansenism. Incomplete documentation.
Anyway, The other thing I found funy was that Erik claimed his comment generated “heated debate”
Somebody, needs to toss him into the mosh pit someday, so he gets a sense of real heat.
Anyway.. I’ll get back to charts in a couple days. I have to make money today
#129 steven mosher:
Steve McIntyre has been through all of the comments listed by Erik in detail. My comment above was that Erik Ramberg was not repeating “his driveby false allegation” so much as making a similar (although much more carefully worded) complaint at Real Climate.
As for your post, it’s really none of my business. The only part I would find mildly offensive is “Crater Lake? I disagree. I think he didnt like how cold it was there.” This could be interpreted as you saying “Hansen removed it only because it would not fit his desired result”. That’s how I read it the first time.
Of course, I know that’s not what you meant. That interpretation would not even make sense because removing a cold station from the early record actually reduces the warming trend.
RE 131.
Ok John. It’s probably not right to ask you to judge the veracity of Erik’s statements. So,
It was wrong of me to try to drag you into it. I apologize. I guess I was a little heated since
I didnt respond when he had singled out one of my more moderate reponses as evidence of rampant
slander here.
MOSH pit On.
Still, there is something that bothers me about Eriks RC post. Here is what he claimed.
1. I ( erik) accused the CA blog of being full of bogus fraud claims.
2. This created Heated debate.
3. Comment #6 on RC is a low blow like CA resorts to.
4. Please address it.
DO YOU SEE THE GAME.
NOW, lets look at this little effwitt piece of garbage logic.
1. Yes erik did accuse CA of this. Without any evidence. And when asked to produce
evidence he cited posts he thought NO ONE WOULD CHECK. He was proven wrong.
Now, he repeats his false claim on RC. Now Mosh pit will not ignore.
2. He claims his post created a heated debate on CA? It did not. It produced responses from SteveMc
to ask him to document his claim, Oh he got a measured reposnse from from SamU.
I IGONORED the slight against me. A fair rendition would be this:
” I accused CA of being full to the brim with claims of fraud against hansen. None
of my claims survived scrunity. Some people were downright nice to me in spite
of my misrepresentations. Other people ignored my slander.”
3. On RC he calls comment #6 offensive when it was not offensive. WHy? Because
he Knows his complaint will not be taken seriously by RC. And he wants to appear
“fair” after he made false claims here. So ERIK complains over here about my comment
which wasnt OFFENSIVE and then He complains
over at RC about comment #6 which isnt offensive. I believe I shall invent a term
for trolls who haunt two blogs. [ Self snipping ] [ self snipping again]
Erik is trying to construct a narrative in which he is the peacemaker of the playground.
And what will he do if you don’t abide by his notion
of civility? he will stop reading.
Lets dig a little deeper into Erik logic.
“Steve – I think Hansens attitude might have something to do with the fact that your blog is filled to the
brim with entries accusing him of systematically committing scientific fraud over a period of 20 years. ”
1. Rationalize Hansen’s behavior. SteveMC asked for data and methods politely. we asked on RC politely.
Then some used FOIA. Then we used public humiliation namely, SteveMc found mistakes.
“Im new to this, so dont know all about the possible He started it! scenarios there are.
But for a newcomer scientist, trying to understand the skeptic position, Im pretty appalled. Erik”
2. I don’t know the history BUT I’m appalled at SteveMC. Hmm. I know enough of the history to excuse
Hansen, but not enough to understand your position. AND, as a scientist I’m willing to AVOID
understanding the history, and feel appalled. And threaten that I will stop reading.
Indulgent self satisified manipulative TWIT. Sorry, that last was a random comment referring to no one
in particular. I find it ironic that someone who excuse their opinion because of lack of knowledge
( I dont know the history) would threaten to stop aquiring the thing they lack, but then again not
so suprised.
MOSH PIT off.
Now, onto crater lake.
Crater lake ( now, I’ll get to go back and look at it with OpenTemp ) was dumped ENTIRELY. I looked at Lake spaulding
( anthony had surveyed the site ) and the early century cooling trend had all the hallmarks of an artificial process.
It was damn near linear. You can go look at my coments on RC. “hey, I see hansens point here” But I
couldn’t get ANYTHING from them, and they didnt realize that I was complaining about Early century cooling being removed!
THAT typifies the intransegience. ( it was also a subtle check I was doing on their ethics, If I ask for
data that HURTS my case and they won’t give it up, then that’s an indicia of agendas)
Also, I Just wanted an explanation for Crater lake. Hansens text said nothing. When I compared it
to its nearest neighbor the temps ran up and down together like they should. But Crater lake station
is at high alt and really cold. Plus, This site gets more snowfall than any other site in the Lower 48.
Let me draw a contrast here. I ran Opentemp on all 1221 stations. I asked you about the “stations not in the mesh”
You answered my questions, coastal cities.. the mask you built. Cool. good answer. I get it. I Moved on.
Ah crap, I promised I wouldnt get heated about this. no more erik comments from me
I sent an email to Erik Ramberg reproaching him for not replying to my lengthy and careful response to his post accusing this site of being “brimful” of accusations of fraud. He emailed me back (And gave permission for me to post this) as follows:
I do not accept most of this response. He was the one who made the allegations of “accusing [Hansen] of systematically committing scientific fraud over a period of 20 years. When confronted with the fact that his evidence did not support his accusation, he now says:
There’s nothing “intricate” about the fact that none of the posts “accused [Hansen] of systematically committing scientific fraud over a period of 20 years. Erik observes “Now, as far as RealClimate goes, their attitude is rather arrogant and dismissive, but this is of a completely different nature than accusations of professional fraud. You get hurt feelings from the first, but you can go to jail and lose your job from the second.” Of course. I refrain from making allegations of fraud, even in the face of Mann saying that he didn’t calculate the verification r2 statistic as that “would be a foolish and incorrect thing to do”. Maybe Mann had just forgotten what he’d done and this was an innocent misrepresentation. I merely observed that it was a misrepresentation – the motive for the misrepresentation is irrelevant to me and so I haven’t speculated on it. Perhaps Erik can explain all of this to us.
Similarly Hansen’s switch from SHAP to FILNET accounting without disclosure. I noted explicitly that it was possible that this switch had been planned for months ahead of time and that the re-ranking of 1998 was simply an adventitious outcome. It’s possible. Perhaps Erik Ramberg can explain this to us.
I do not claim that these particular events have any bearing on whether Arctic ice is melting or the cooling of the stratosphere. But equally the situation with the Arctic ice doesn’t mean that Mann’s verification r2 is now suddenly significant or that his nondisclosure of adverse results was justified.
There have been numerous cases where scientists who are well known in their fields have manipulated data to produce the results they expected. Some for personal gain some because they have a result the are expecting to be true and have a strong belief that it should be true even if the data does not support it. The Korean cloning scandal is one example. Whether Hansen is guilty of either is unproven, but it is valid to question his motives when he refuses to release data and code. Of course the problem could be that Hansen and Mann have never had to deal with someone scrutinizing their work at the level they are experiencing and don’t know how to handle it. I am more skeptical Hansen’s ability to be objective in view of his almost fanatical belief in AGW, which I think could lead to manipulation of the data either consciously or unconsciously to produce the result he “knows” is true. AGW may well be true, but torturing the data is wrong regardless of having good intentions, and I think we have a right to question Hansen’s veracity in light of previous events.
As for RC, I seem to remember a post which accused Anthony Watts of photoshopping his surface station photographs. Frequenters of this site are accused of being deniers with an implication that we are similar to “Holocaust deniers”. Anyone disagreeing with Hansen must be in the pay of Big Oil. Erik’s equating the level of retoric on this site verses the RC site shows a definite lack of objectivity. I can’t stand to read RC just because of the level of insulting remarks that I have to wade through.
But inspite of that, the right way to deal with this is to do the science and let it speak for itself.
What I got out of that letter was that the posts in question weren’t exactly what he claimed they were, but none of it matters, because it’s obvious that the conclusions of Hansen, Mann, et. al. are right, regardless of what the data say.
Which raises the obvious question; if the conclusion of catastrophic AGW is forgone, why are Hansen, Mann, et. al. even bothering doing this work? You could say it’s to quantify the effect, but in that case, it’s important to get it right.
There’s no scenario, unless I’m missing something, where slipshod science is better than no science.
re: Erik’s message
It was poisonous and should have resulted in an abject apology on his part once he recovered from whatever he was on.
The rest mostly shows he’s not read anything except warmer sites. (And perhaps a few of the more fetid skeptic sites.) If he wanted to argue the science here, he could / should have done so instead of flying under false colors.
After a quick scroll through the list, it looks like only about 25% of the stations are in the S hemisphere. Has anyone done a count ?
It seems the S hemisphere has been cooling more than the N. This would give an obvious bias to CRU data.
Steve: They make grids and average stations within gridcells.
A quick check with Excel … just 17% of the stations are in the S hemisphere.
This must give the CRU data a considerable bias towards warming ?