Who Is Really Anti-Science?
Via Hot Air, there have been further developments in the erroneous NASA global warming temperatures. Steve McIntyre forced a correction in the GISS data when he found incongruous numbers in the data. Reto Ruedy and James Hansen were forced to admit that the data had a significant skew starting in in the year 2000. This severely impacted the so-called warmest years ever in the US. Now the true believers are dismissing the bad data as irrelevant. The best, most thorough collection of data on the planet is shown to be incorrect - and nobody is honest enough to admit that there may be a real problem here?
Yep. That's exactly what the true believers are maintaining.
In its consideration of possible urbanization and/or microsite effects, IPCC has taken the position that urban effects are negligible, relying on a very few studies (Jones et al 1990, Peterson et al 2003, Parker 2005, 2006), each of which has been discussed at length at this site. In my opinion, none of these studies can be relied on for concluding that urbanization impacts have been avoided in the ROW sites contributing to the overall history.
One more story to conclude. Non-compliant surface stations were reported in the formal academic literature by Pielke and Davey (2005) who described a number of non-compliant sites in eastern Colorado. In NOAA’s official response to this criticism, Vose et al (2005) said in effect -
it doesn’t matter. It’s only eastern Colorado. You haven’t proved that there are problems anywhere else in the United States.
In most businesses, the identification of glaring problems, even in a restricted region like eastern Colorado, would prompt an immediate evaluation to ensure that problems did not actually exist. However, that does not appear to have taken place and matters rested until Anthony Watts and the volunteers at surfacestations.org launched a concerted effort to evaluate stations in other parts of the country and determined that the problems were not only just as bad as eastern Colorado, but in some cases were much worse.
Now in response to problems with both station quality and adjustment software, Schmidt and Hansen say in effect, as NOAA did before them -
it doesn’t matter. It’s only the United States. You haven’t proved that there are problems anywhere else in the world.
McIntyre has graphs, facts and figures to back up his findings. Reto Ruedy and James Hansen, NASA and GISS refuse to publish their data or the algorithms they use to massage the data with to arrive at their spectacular, lurid findings. McIntyre is freely publishing his methodology and data - a basic cornerstone of science. Reudy and Hansen are deliberately hiding the way they arrive at their conclusions - which bears no real resemblance to science but sure looks a lot like what witch doctors do. (Incidentally, any truth-seeking lawyer who really wants to make a name for themselves would have a ball filing a Freedom of Information Act request on NASA, GISS, Reto Ruedy and James Hansen. Just a thought.)
Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog is all over this and has more to add about the real denialists here - hint, it ain't the global warming skeptics.
The general response at RealClimate.org has been: Nothing to see here, move along.
Among other incorrect stories going around are that the mistake was due to a Y2K bug or that this had something to do with photographing weather stations. Again, simply false.
I really, really don't think it matters exactly how the bug was found, except to the extent that RealClimate.org would like to rewrite history and convince everyone this was just a normal adjustment made by the GISS themselves rather than a mistake found by an outsider. However, just for the record, the GISS, at least for now until they clean up history a bit, admits the bug was spotted by Steven McIntyre. Whatever the bug turned out to be, McIntyre initially spotted it as a discontinuity that seemed to exist in GISS data around the year 2000. He therefore hypothesized it was a Y2K bug, but he didn't know for sure because Hansen and the GISS keep all their code as a state secret. And McIntyre himself says he became aware of the discontinuity during a series of posts that started from a picture of a weather station at Anthony Watts blog. I know because I was part of the discussion, talking to these folks online in real time. Here is McIntyre explaining it himself.
In sum, the post on RealClimate says:
Sum total of this change? A couple of hundredths of degrees in the US rankings and no change in anything that could be considered climatically important (specifically long term trends).
A bit of background - surface temperature readings have read higher than satellite readings of the troposphere, when the science of greenhouse gases says the opposite should be true. Global warming hawks like Hansen and the GISS have pounded on the satellite numbers, investigating them 8 ways to Sunday, and have on a number of occasions trumpeted upward corrections to satellite numbers that are far smaller than these downward corrections to surface numbers.
My opinion on all of this should be pretty well known. I recognize that there has been a warming trend. What I do not believe is that the extent of man's involvement in that has been at all settled. I also believe that many of the "cures" for global warming are badly thought out at best and criminally fraudulent at worst. Basing public policy on voodoo science is a really, really bad idea.
If you don't believe the "cure" is worse than the disease in this case, you are wearing blinders. Planting trees: fraudulent. Biofuels: kills orangutans in huge numbers and displaces and devastates native people. Not to mention outright murder of humans and the skyrocketing food prices that will start to bite everyone on the planet soon. Oh, and all you holier-than-thou Prius drivers? The battery in your car uses nickel from this mine in Ontario, Canada. You can see the environmental devastation from that facility from outer space. Still going to pat yourself on the back and vandalize a Hummer?
Who is really anti-science? Who are really the denialists here. Who are the real Luddites?
Energy, Environment, Junk Science, Left Wing | Gaius Monday, 13 August , 2007
Other Links to this Post
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Right Voices » Blog Archive » Newsweek Editor: Our Warming Story Contrived — Monday, 13 August , 2007 @ 6:53 pm
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Save The Planet: Kill An Orangutan — Monday, 13 August , 2007 @ 9:38 pm
By Van Helsing, Tuesday, 14 August , 2007 @ 10:01 am
It’s not the science that matters. It’s feeling good about ourselves because we are doing our part to save the polar bears.
By FedUp, Tuesday, 14 August , 2007 @ 10:11 am
Sooooo.. when is Hollywood going to stop with all the pyro-technics for all their movies?? Is NASCAR going to shut down to save the planet… are all the politicians going to shut up so they stop generating all the hot air…. Thought not… just wanted to know….